Sometimes creating space for something new requires letting go of what no longer supports who you are becoming. There is one question that has shaped many of the biggest decisions in my life:
What if I give up before I have truly tried?
That question is heavy for me.
Not in a cute motivational quote kind of way. I mean it lands in my chest. It makes me stop. It makes me look at myself honestly.
- What if I walk away too soon?
- What if I choose the safer path, not because it is truly aligned, but because I am tired, scared, overwhelmed, or worn down?
- What if I go back to what is familiar and spend years wondering whether I abandoned something that mattered?
That question has followed me through my career, my health journey, my business, and my personal life. Honestly, it has probably kept me moving more times than I can count.
It is also one of the reasons I believe health creates freedom.
Because when your body, energy, confidence, clarity, and sense of purpose are not supporting you, every dream becomes harder to carry.
The safe path was always there
When I left corporate and started building Be Fab Be You, I did not step into a perfect, polished, freedom-filled entrepreneurial dream.
Let us not romanticize it.
I was not sitting on piles of money with a perfect plan, a full client roster, and every business detail figured out.
The decision was emotional before it was practical.
For someone with a finance background, that is almost funny to admit. But it is true.
I had spent years in corporate finance. I had earned my Executive MBA. I knew how to analyze numbers, assess risk, build spreadsheets, and think through decisions logically.
But this decision was different.
I was standing at a crossroads. I could go back and look for another corporate role, rebuild the familiar path, and choose the safer option.
Or I could give the health and wellness dream inside me a real chance.
The founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition had given advice I probably should have followed: do not quit your daytime job until you have established yourself with at least a few clients.
Well, I did not listen.
And no, I am not saying that is the advice I would give everyone.
But at that point in my life, I knew something in me was changing. I could not honestly say, “Maria, you gave this everything.”
And because I could not say that, I could not walk away.
Grit is not glamorous
People love to talk about resilience after the comeback.
They love the highlight reel: the reinvention, the courage, the “she did it” story.
But the middle?
The middle is not glamorous.
The middle is where you are tired. The middle is where you doubt yourself. The middle is where you question whether you confused a passion with a business. The middle is where you take side work, keep showing up, and do what needs to be done while you are still figuring things out.
Building Be Fab Be You stretched me emotionally, mentally, financially, and physically.
I invested a lot into the business. I made mistakes. I overextended myself. I created a financial hole I eventually had to face.
That was humbling.
And in 2018, I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. One of the messages that hit me hard was the idea that getting a job while you follow your dream is not failure. Sometimes it is the responsible thing that protects the dream.
That helped me put my ego aside.
In May 2019, I started a side hustle. I worked evenings and mostly on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I worked my way through it. I made a commitment that I would pay off the debt I had created while still building the business I believed in. And in less than four years, I did.
That is grit.
Not the pretty version. The real version.
Grit looked like working when I was tired. Grit looked like doing work I did not necessarily want to do so I could keep building what mattered. Grit looked like facing the numbers, swallowing my pride, and choosing responsibility without abandoning the dream.
It also got lonely.
I was single. No kids. No family nearby. There were seasons when I fell and had to get back up mostly on my own.
That is a price some people pay in certain seasons. Entrepreneur or not, most of us eventually face decisions that no one else can make for us.
And those decisions can be lonely.
Grit looked like facing the numbers, swallowing my pride, and choosing responsibility without abandoning the dream.
Building requires ownership
I would not say rebuilding Be Fab Be You required ownership.
I was building it. Well, I am still building it.
Building this business has required me to ask hard questions over and over again.
- Where am I in my own way?
- Where am I not going because of fear?
- What am I not doing because I am afraid of rejection or judgment?
- What old stories from my past are still shaping how I see myself?
- Where am I stalling because I do not feel ready, polished, perfect, or fully prepared?
- Where am I waiting to have it all figured out before I let myself move?
Those are not cute journal prompts.
They are uncomfortable questions.
But they matter.
Because ownership is not blame. Ownership is power.
Blame keeps you stuck. Ownership gives you options.
I had to face the reality of where my decisions had taken me financially. I had to face where fear was keeping me small. I had to face where scarcity, ego, perfectionism, and old insecurities were influencing the way I was showing up.
And I had to keep choosing.
Not once.
Over and over.
That is one thing rebuilding, building, growing, healing, and changing all have in common. You do not ask the hard questions one time and graduate forever.
You keep asking.
Growth can change your environment
One of the harder parts of changing your life is that your environment may need to change too.
When I started changing my health, habits, thoughts, career, and identity, I had to reevaluate some relationships.
Were these true friendships?
Were they supportive?
Were they aligned with where I was going?
Or were they relationships that belonged to an older version of me?
That was painful.
In 2018, I attended a conference with Lisa Nichols, and something she said shifted my perspective. The message I heard was this: the gift was given to you. Do not expect everyone else to understand it, support it, or carry it for you. You still have to do the work.
That hit me hard.
I realized how much resentment I was carrying toward people who did not understand what I was building, what I was changing, or who I was becoming.
But resentment was not helping me grow.
Around that same season, I had also been exposed to John Maxwell’s work around growth and leadership, and another lesson stayed with me: do what you do because it is aligned with who you are becoming, not because you are waiting for everyone to notice, approve, or give something back.
Those lessons helped me let go.
Not perfectly. Not overnight.
But enough to understand that some people will not be curious about your growth. Some people will not understand your dream. Some people will judge from the outside without knowing the full story.
And that cannot be the reason you stop.
Books, speakers, mentors, podcasts, trainings, and people who have walked farther than you can give you powerful perspective when you are in a lonely season. I have grown a lot by seeking those messages, sitting with them, and applying the ones that challenged me.
Sometimes creating space for something new requires letting go of what no longer supports who you are becoming.
That applies to business.
It applies to health.
It applies to identity.
It applies to the next version of your life.
What does success actually mean?
Years ago, I heard a saying about not confusing a hobby with a business. I asked myself that question many times.
Is health just a hobby for me?
Am I trying to turn something I love into a business that is not working?
Or have I not truly allowed myself to build this the way it needs to be built?
That question forced me to look at success differently.
What is success to me? What is success to someone else?
And how much of our health is quietly shaping what we believe is possible?
For me, success is deeply connected to freedom.
Freedom to do meaningful work.
Freedom to feel strong and clear enough to keep building.
Freedom to make decisions from alignment instead of fear.
Freedom to perform, lead, travel, train, serve, create, and live without feeling trapped by exhaustion or symptoms.
But success is personal.
Your definition may be different from mine.
Sometimes creating space for something new requires letting go of what no longer supports who you are becoming.
The question is whether your health is helping you live your version of success or quietly limiting it.
Because many people do not know how much better they could feel. They normalize fatigue, brain fog, cravings, poor sleep, digestive issues, low motivation, and emotional reactivity because so many people around them feel some version of the same thing.
But common does not always mean optimal.
And functioning is not the same as thriving.
The same “what if” applies to your health
This is where the “what if” question becomes bigger than my business.
- What if you are not lazy?
- What if you are not broken?
- What if you do not need another plan that makes you feel like a failure?
- What if your body is asking for something different than what worked five or ten years ago?
- What if your energy is being drained by things you have not fully questioned yet?
- What if you are spending too much time in work, roles, habits, or responsibilities that deplete you, even if you are good at them?
- What if the issue is not that you lack discipline, but that your body, mind, purpose, and daily life are no longer aligned?
Common or ‘normal’ does not always mean optimal.
And here is another question I want high-achieving professionals to ask:
What if you are holding back from the next level of your career, leadership, business, or life because deep down you know your body is already running too close to empty?
Maybe it is not that you lack the intelligence.
Maybe it is not that you lack the education.
Maybe it is not that you cannot do the job.
Maybe you know you can do the job, but you are not sure your body can keep paying the price.
That matters.
Because promotions, growth, leadership, responsibility, and bigger goals require capacity.
- They require patience.
- They require emotional regulation.
- They require recovery.
- They require energy.
- They require a body that can help you carry what you are saying yes to.
So the question is not only, “Can I handle more?”
The better question may be: Am I building the capacity to handle the life I say I want?
I understand the valley, and why support matters
I understand the valley.
I understand what it feels like to be capable and still feel stretched.
I understand what it feels like to do hard things and still need a better strategy.
I understand what it feels like to be the strong one, the responsible one, the one who keeps figuring it out.
But strength can become a trap.
Are you building the capacity to handle the life you say you want?
It becomes a trap when it turns into overworking, overthinking, overcommitting, and ignoring your body.
It becomes a trap when you carry so much that you stop moving.
I have had seasons where there was so much on my plate that I became paralyzed. Too many decisions. Too many ideas. Too much pressure. Too much responsibility. Too many things that felt important.
And when everything feels important, it becomes harder to move the thing that actually matters.
That is where support matters.
Not because a coach magically fixes your life. That would be cute. It would also be nonsense.
Support helps you see patterns you are too close to see.
Support helps you slow down enough to ask better questions.
Support helps you sort through the noise, choose the next right step, and course-correct before you quit or keep pushing harder in the wrong direction.
That is true in business.
It is true in health.
It is true in life.
What rebuilding taught me about coaching
Building Be Fab – Be You changed the way I coach.
It taught me that people do not need shame.
They do not need another generic plan.
They do not need someone throwing more information at them while they are already overwhelmed.
They need clarity. They need structure. They need honest conversations. They need someone who can help them connect the dots and stay with the process long enough to see what is actually working.
That is why I look at the whole person.
- Not just the food log.
- Not just the lab marker.
- Not just the workout routine.
- Not just the symptom list.
- And not just the job title.
I look at the person trying to perform inside a real life.
-
- Your stress.
- Your schedule.
- Your responsibilities.
- Your goals.
- Your values.
- Your environment.
- Your data.
- Your resistance.
- Your work.
- Your home life.
- Your leadership.
- Your energy.
- Your “what if.”
Because your body does not live in a vacuum.
It lives inside your real life.
And my coaching lens is not only health and wellness. It also includes professional and business coaching. I look at how your health affects the way you perform at work, how you show up at home, how you make decisions, how you communicate, how you recover, and how much capacity you actually have for the next level you say you want.
There is a cost to the way we pursue success.
- More hours.
- Less sleep.
- More stress.
- Fewer boundaries.
- Constant pushing.
For a while, that may look productive.
But eventually the body, mind, relationships, and performance pay the price.
That is why I believe health creates freedom.
Freedom to perform. Freedom to lead. Freedom to grow.
Freedom to succeed in a way that does not require you to abandon yourself.
Before you give up, ask better questions
If you are in a season where your body is not responding, I want you to pause before deciding this is just how it is now.
If your energy is low, the weight is not moving, your digestion is off, your cravings feel louder than your discipline, or your focus feels inconsistent, ask better questions.
If you are losing patience at work or at home, feeling emotionally reactive, struggling to recover, or wondering whether you can handle the next challenge, ask better questions.
- What if there is a pattern you have not seen yet?
- What if your body is adapting to stress, sleep debt, blood sugar swings, gut issues, nutrient gaps, hormone changes, or recovery problems?
- What if the plan that worked five or ten years ago is simply not the plan your body needs now?
- What if your energy is being spent in places that no longer support the life you want?
- What gives you energy?
- What drains it?
- What are you doing because you are good at it, even though it quietly takes from you?
- What would you do more of if you had the energy, confidence, and health to say yes?
And maybe the bigger question is this:
What if you give up on seeking optimal health before you have truly understood what your body is asking for?
A more comprehensive bloodwork perspective, such as Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis, can be one way to start asking better questions when symptoms and patterns are not making sense.
Or this:
What if you give up on a dream, a promotion, a business, a relationship, or a next chapter because your body no longer feels equipped to carry it?
That is the question I do not want you to ignore.
You may not be done yet
I am grateful I did not give up on the work I believed in.
Not because the path was easy.
It was not.
But staying with it shaped me. It made me stronger, clearer, more compassionate, more honest, and more committed to the kind of coaching I believe people need.
That is what I bring into my work today.
Not perfection.
Not theory.
Not cute wellness slogans.
Real life. Real strategy. Real accountability. Real course correction.
A combination of health, wellness, performance, and professional coaching that looks at the whole individual, not just isolated symptoms or isolated goals.
Because whether you are rebuilding your health, your confidence, your career, your business, your relationship with your body, or your capacity to perform, the question may be the same:
- What if you are not done yet?
- What if there is still more available to you?
- What if your body is not the thing holding you back, but the thing asking for a better strategy?
- What if health is the foundation that gives you more freedom to answer the questions you have been avoiding?
The answer will be different for every person. That is the point.
I do not get to define success for you. But I do want to ask you this:
Are you willing to define it honestly?
And are you willing to build the health, energy, clarity, and capacity to live it?
Ready to stop guessing?
If this resonated with you, and your body has been giving you signs you can no longer ignore, the next step does not have to be dramatic.
It can simply be a conversation. Start with a free 20-minute Clarity Session.
This is not a coaching session or a personalized plan. It is a clarity and fit call to talk through where you are, what feels stuck, and whether working together makes sense. Because health creates freedom.
And your future deserves a stronger foundation.