She who dares wins, with Tanya Targett
Surviving an abusive relationship and a tsunami and building a 6-figure business in 6 months
Tanya Targett has lived through terrifying dark times—experiencing an abusive relationship, a tsunami, clinical depression, adrenal fatigue, and mini-strokes. However, these experiences have fostered an inward journey of healing and bringing her true gifts to the world yet more powerfully and authentically. Today, Tanya is thankful for the life that she has lived. She shines as a great role model for her kids, a successful entrepreneur, and a rocking publicity trainer.
“She Who Dares Wins”
What was you call to adventure?
My dad was in the British SAS.
The SAS motto is “He Who Dares Wins”.
But I always changed that to “She Who Dares Wins”.
I didn’t want to join the military or I didn't want to chase bad people in the military with weaponry.
My weapon was pen.
I was going to take bad guys by writing stories.
There became an investigative unit. I managed to get in there, and I really did chase some bad guys.
I uncovered pedophile priests, I went undercover and hid under upturned boats to spy on politicians and got threatened with arrest by federal police.
As a reporter, I would drive into the eye of the storm, instead of away from the eye of a storm.
I kept going because I had it in my blood.
“She who dares wins” and that’s always become my mantra.
Why not me?
When I was in year 12 I decided I wanted to be a journalist.
My English teacher tried to talk me out of it, because it’s very hard to get a job as a reporter.
But that’s never dissuaded me.
My attitude has always been, “Someone’s got to get the job, why not me?”
Someone’s got to get the interview, why not me?
There were over 3,000 applicants and seven of us got a job as a cadet reporter.
I went straight from high school into a newsroom.
That mantra or being brave and being courageous and “He Who Dares Wins” has really served me well.
For those of us who think “Well, it can be me”, then it’s limitless what you can achieve, what you can do, and the access.
Weakness VS Courage
The other mantra which certainly did not serve me is “to show no signs of weakness”.
It takes so much more courage to stop and pivot, than to push through.
It took years for me to discover that.
It was only when I found myself on my own, living on welfare, when I was forced to accept the help from others.
I suddenly realized that to accept help is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of courage.
To show vulnerability is to show great courage.
It went against all my programming.
The frog and the pot.
There’s a saying about a frog in a pot.
Overtime, slowly the temperature has been turned up to the point that it is so hot. You know you should get out, but you are paralyzed and you can’t.
I was in a relationship that was very controlling.
Classic psychopath behavior, I was moved away from my family and friends.
I was isolated.
All the little lifelines that I had were cut off very, very slowly.
All the things that I had going for me was all signed over to my husband.
I have become one of those women we used to write stories about. I'm one of those pathetic, weak women that were strong, that are educated, that should know better.
I was terrified.
Mine wasn’t physical domestic violence.
It was emotional and psychological.
You keep drawing lines in the sand but here’s what happens with the frog in the pot, the line in the sand comes and you don’t know how to get out.
I had no family, no backup plan, no lifeline at all, no safety net.
I’d gotten into a relationship as a woman; property and car and career.
I came out without even a car in my own name.
Broken, shattered, barely able to string a few sentences together.
I was unrecognizable.
Goddesses of support
Three weeks before I had fled, my daughter turned to me. She burst into tears and said to me “Mommy, if you don’t stand up to bullies, they’ll rule the world.”
She was nine.
I just thought, “I should’ve left sooner”.
That’s my only regret.
I found myself living on welfare.
Then I just went about madness with the support of friends emotionally, and I built a six-figure business in six months.
Signs of strength
Your outward success doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story of the recovery of your spirit because there is much deeper work that you’ve had to do
At the very first talk that I gave, the keynote talk to launch my business, I’m standing in front of a room only of 60, 65 people.
In my head I could hear him, “You can’t survive without me. You can’t do this on your own”.
I cried.
In front of a room full of people, I cried.
I drove home that night to the babysitter's to pick up my daughter. I cried all the way to the babysitter's.
I thought, “you’ve got a choice, you can turn the tears off and show strength to Olivia or you can show strength another way and you can show her that it’s okay to be broken”.
I cried for two weeks. And I came back.
I think that was so invaluable for her to see someone who she saw as someone so strong be so weak.
But it wasn’t weakness.
Someone so strong, so together, to be so broken and so shattered, to then come back even stronger and to keep going and to keep functioning.
Reclaiming parts of yourself from the deep dark places
Years earlier I went to work.
An inland tsunami came.
Killed 38 people.
My warehouse was in the epicenter of the tsunami. The business was just gone.
I couldn’t get home.
The tsunami separated me from my children.
It was absolutely devastating.
The stress of it sent me to hospital with a suspected mini-stroke. I had seizure after seizure.
I couldn’t drive for three or four months.
I had to start from ground zero again.
I was diagnosed from clinical depression, which was a fantastic turning point because the minute I got that diagnosis, I went, "I'm going to go again. She who dares wins. I can do this. I can pick myself up. I can keep going.”
I am so thankful for all of those because I can resonate and empathize.
I hope that being through this, it’s made me a better person, better trainer, educator, and leader.
I’m very blessed for my experiences and gifts.
Healing as the key to unlocking your story
What I perceived as weakness was my greatest strength.
When I was giving my live workshops, what I found was when I let my guard down or let a little sneak peak into my background that’s all people would want to talk about.
I had to heal enough to be okay to share.
Probably only four or five months ago have I actually started to share my full story.
The impact that I've had from being able to share that story is so fantastic.
That whole journey has been about healing.
I hope that I give other single parents the knowledge to know that you can have it all.
You can go through this and come out the other side relatively unscarred.
Speaking to your younger self
Healing has really been the key to unlocking that story and that huge potential to inspire others. When you're looking back at the dark time in your life when you were in that abusive relationship, what would you say to your younger self suffering like you were at that time?
If only I had have known back then what I know now.
My advice would be it’s going to be more than okay.
Everything will turn out just as you want it to be.
You can do this.
You will do this.
You are the hero of your own journey.
Make some space for all the awesomeness to come into your life.
Links and Resources:
Did you enjoy the show? Let us know your biggest takeaways in the comments.
If you like what we’re doing, please subscribe to #InChargeShow in iTunes and leave us a review and a 5-star rating, to help more women who won’t settle find us.
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I look forward to connecting with you soon!
Until then,
Stay in your heart.
xx
Valerie
In this episode, we talk about: relationship, abusive, business, starting, confidence, entrepreneur, mom, single
Living her right-sized destiny with Susan Peirce Thompson, PhD:
From drug and food addiction to a research and academic career to an entrepreneur success story (as in, from 0 to 7 figures in 2 years).
From drug addiction to food addiction, Susan Peirce Thompson plummeted to the darkest of places. However, drawing on a feeling at age 10 that she was destined for something powerful, she’s always been a seeker. She dedicated years of work to inner healing and understanding herself, which led her to find her true destiny. Now, she is a brain scientist, psychology professor, and the founder of Bright Line Eating that helps millions of people with sustainable weight loss.
Meeting an angel in the darkest of places
How did you go from drug addition to getting on the path that has ultimately taken you to where you are now?
I was a seeker.
I did mushrooms when I was 14 and had this really transcendent experience.
I committed in my deepest soul that I was going to do that every chance that I got.
And I did.
I sought alcohol and mushrooms and pot and acid and ecstasy.
I had a weight problem. I didn’t feel comfortable in my body and I didn’t carry my weight proportionately.
I found crystal meth and it is an amazing drug for weight control.
Suddenly I didn’t care about eating.
I did crystal meth for a very long time.
I got very thin and very psychotic, essentially schizophrenia.
I started having scary and complete breaks with reality.
I dropped out of high school.
I got pretty far down with my drug addiction.
I had to get clean and sober, which I did at the age of 20.
Not through any brilliance of my own. By dumb luck and grace.
I got taken to a 12-step meeting by this guy I met at a gas station at 3:00 in the morning – this really cute guy.
It was a strange first date but I have been clean and sober since that day.
The phases of the journey
What was the next phase? How did your journey unfold?
I had to go on another phase of searching for a solution to my food problem.
I was wanting the solution to show up with the same clarity that the solution to drugs and alcohol showed up.
It was not showing up that way.
It was this wishy-washy, confusing, some people do it this way, some people do it that way.
So I went to 12-step food programs over a span of years.
I had momentary success but nothing that lasted.
I went through a lot of pain.
An eight-year stretch of time had me ending 40 pounds heavier than I started.
I intimately got obese through that journey.
Parallel lives
I moved to the University of Rochester.
The universe was so clear, “Susan this is your home”.
I could feel my future in the walls.
Within a year I met my husband, six months after that we were married. I became a Bahyai, which is a big part of my spiritual journey. My life was going great.
But my weight was climbing.
My life turned into parallel lives.
I was having all this academic and professional success, my home life was getting really good, and all that success couldn’t seem to transfer over to this food problem.
I watched as food addiction took me to darker places than drug addiction.
Sugar and flour were worse for me than crack ad crystal meth.
They absolutely did take me to a deeper spiritual bottom, to more desperation, to more of a feeling of hopelessness.
A moment in time imprinted on our soul
You said you could feel your future in the walls, how did you feel it, how did you trust it?
There was a moment where I trusted it.
I was at Peter Lenny’s house – he was the Chair of department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
I excused myself to the living room and made a phone call to my dad.
He said words I will never forget.
He’s been such a support to me at different junctures of my journey.
He said “Stand in that living room and close your eyes and soak that feeling of being there. That is all that matters, how you feel being there. You will come home and talk yourself out of it and let your head get in the way. Remember how it feels”.
It was a moment in time imprinted in my soul.
Reclaiming the treasures of our past
How do you tune into your inner voice? In my experience it’s always the quietest voices, because the external voices and the voice of reason always tend to be louder. I need to really tune in deeper, go into a meditation, a prayer, a state of connection with my heart to really hear it.
I meditate for 30-minutes every morning.
The phrase “Bright Line Eating” came to me in meditation on January 26th 2014, as the name of a book title.
It was like a megaphone. It was commanding.
The universe put that on my heart.
I tumbled out of my morning meditation and started writing the chapter titles.
I believe that this Bright Line Eating needs to exist in the world and it is just pouring through me.
My whole journey has been priming me for this.
Things that I had written off as failures or meaningless side paths, every little bit of my journey was peppered with these coincidences that led me to where I am now.
Far better to live your own dharma imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly – Bhagavad Gita
I suffered from clinical depression and anxiety. Now I understand that going into the wounds actually uncovered the path for me.
Before I started Bright Line Eating I was working on myself really hard for 20 years.
I worked the 12-steps 13 times, in five different 12-step programs.
I’ve been to therapy since 6th grade.
I’ve done Byron Katie’s “The Work”.
I have two full-time life coaches.
I am in a couple of different mastermind groups.
I pay through the teeth for support.
I have a process for working on myself.
I know myself so well.
I am ready to be a hollow reed. I am ready to be the instrument, the channel.
I love your message of going toward to wound, going toward whatever’s hurting. Not trying to side step it.
Square your shoulders to it.
That’s where the magic is.
I don’t know where everyone’s inspiration has come from, but mine has certainly come from really diving into my biggest challenge—addiction.
My own healing around that, my own solution for that, living that experience, now qualifies me to help others.
Often people want to help the world but they are missing the true story that they have to share.
Take that mess, slowly start working on cleaning it, and bring that method to the world.
Aligning with your destiny
Looking back at yourself 20 years ago, could you have predicted your life right now?
20 years ago, no way.
But 30 years, yes.
When I was 10 and I was an actress on stage in San Francisco, I had the feeling that I was destined for something powerful.
I got that feeling back somewhere in my first year of sobriety.
For most of my life I could picture this.
This life that I am living now feels like the most congruent life that I have ever lived.
Connect with Susan Peirce Thomson, PhD and Bright Light Eating:
Did you enjoy the show? Let us know your biggest takeaways in the comments.
If you like what we’re doing, please subscribe to #InChargeShow in iTunes and leave us a review and a 5-star rating, to help more women who won’t settle find us.
Follow the links to take the quizzes we discussed on the show:
In the free report at the end of each quiz, you’ll get an invitation to join our Facebook community. I hope you accept it.
I look forward to connecting with you soon!
Until then,
Stay in your heart.
xx
Valerie
In this episode, we talk about: food addiction, drug addiction, destiny, spirituality, spiritual seeker, entrepreneur success, starting a business, weight loss