We were lucky to catch up with Mikayla Martinez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Mikayla, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
To put it plainly, I get my resilience first and foremost from God, and secondly, from surviving 100% of the things that were designed to take me out.
See, the thing about resilience is that I think it’s much more a verb than it is a noun. The definition states “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness” and although I believe that definition is true and accurate, resilience is more of a choice than it is a passive, thing.
Because resilience requires us to CHOOSE to withstand, and persevere through all of life’s adversities, and it requires a commitment from us to believe in our capacity to withstand, even when we have absolutely no idea how we’re going to do it. It’s an act of faith.
We as human beings are beautifully and wonderfully made with an unlimited capacity when walking in divine alignment, but the reason why some of us endure, and some of us do not is because we CHOOSE to.
My resilience has come not by accident but from my unwavering decision to never back down in the face of hard, of pain, of suffering, or of anything else that I’ve had to face in my life. I’ve survived abuse, teen motherhood, losing a sibling, losing someone close to be for every year for the last four years and that’s just to name a few; and what I’ve learned in all of my darkest moments is that it’s in that very darkness where my lightness is magnified. Where my growth is tenfold.
I pride myself in being like the lotus flower because even in the darkness I bloom. And that’s not by accident— that’s because I choose too. I choose to trust in my relationship with god, I choose to trust in my ability to endure, and I choose to take one step forward even when i don’t know where I’m going. My resilience comes from making the consistent decision that if it’s going to be, it is up to me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
It’s ironic really, how much I struggle with putting words to what I do because the truth is, I’ve pivoted, and twisted and turned so many times that it’s hard to call it one thing.
I’m a writer, a coach, a designer of habits, a children’s book author(coming soon!), a mother, a podcaster, and more; but at the core of everything that I do is a mission to cultivate spaces and pieces that honor our work in progress while celebrating the magic of our in between spaces.
See, the duality of our existence is something I think many of us struggle with. We like to believe that we’re either a finished product, or a work in progress but what I believe whole heartedly is that we are both a work in progress and a work of art, all at the same time!
I believe that we can both accept our current versions wholly and fully with love and admiration, while also striving to refine and redefine, and I aim to embody that in everything that I create.
I do that through writing, I do that through coaching, I do that through motherhood, I do that through habit building and most recently I’m doing that through children’s books.
Because the reality is, we’re all just figuring this life thing out as we go, and there’s TOO much pressure to be perfect, and not enough excitement to progress.
So with my work, my goal is always to create safe enough spaces for people to show up as they are to work towards whoever it is they wish to become.
Along the same theme I’m in the process of self publishing my first children’s book called “The Magic is You” which is a story about a little girl who has a closet of magical tutus that give her super powers, until one day she loses them. What she eventually comes to realize though is that the magic was never in the tutus, it was always her!
and what I hope for both children and parents alike to realize through this story is that all that we have, all that’s on the outside is not ever where our magic comes from, the magic was ALWAYS you; and I always hope for my work to remind people that THEY are the magic, in every version of themselves.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the three biggest qualities or skills that were most impactful on my journey to where I am today were my faith, my willingness to be a beginner and my relationship with failure.
The reality is you will never actualize your dreams if you don’t first believe they can happen, which is where faith comes in. I think like resilience, faith is an active choice that we have to make every single day. It’s saying your prayers and trusting god enough that even when I don’t know how, what, when, where or why, I believe that I will get where I’m supposed to be because there is no other option. To foster that faith I think the best thing you can do is say your prayers and take action. Taking action is the catalyst of all things, and it’s also the signal to god that you trust him to work on your behalf so as you move, he does too, and that grows your faith.
Second, I believe you must be okay with being a beginner because the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know anything, ha! As you move through life, change, evolve, level up, etc., you have to be willing to accept that you will absolutely not know everything and you have to fall in love with LEARNING, instead of feeling bad about not knowing.
This is where your relationship to failure comes in. Too many of us adults have such a massive fear of failure, that being a beginner isn’t even an option to us. People would rather not try anything new, so as to avoid the vulnerability that comes with failing, or being bad at something at first.
But the thing about failure is that it really doesn’t exist if you approach it with the mindset that it will either work out, or you learn something! The only real way to learn is to do, but if you’re unwilling to be a beginner, and you’re unwilling to put yourself out there because you’re afraid to fail, you’re quite literally never going to get anything you want in life.
The best way that I’ve found to repair your relationship ship with failure is to channel your inner child. If you’re a parent— I’m certain you’ve told your kids at least once to try and try again; but how hard can it be to take our own advice?! The best way to get comfortable with failing is to do hard things and new things as often as you can with an approach that a child would take.
The more new things you try, the more space you create for yourself to fail; and the more you do that, the more you learn how insignificant those small “failures” really are! Because the beauty of being a beginner, and putting yourself out there is you LEARN something new every single time. And with every attempt and every lesson, you grow that muscle a little more where those “failures” aren’t really a big deal at all anymore. It’s almost like growing your failure tolerance— the more you do it, the less impact it has on you so you can take action sooner with way less pressure.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
The biggest challenge I’m facing right now is trying to overcome my fear of success.
Now, I know that might sound silly, because we just talked about my lack of fear of failure; but the reality is in my mind failure is only failure if I give up, which isn’t even an option.
What scares me more than anything is fear of success becauseI have no idea what that’s going to look like, and if I’ll be equipped to handle it all.
And in my heart, and in my faith— I know that I can do anything with God, but the reality is that even the most faithful believers struggle with unbelief; and that’s something I’m really working on.
Failure in my definition is giving up, which is not on the table, but success? The limit does not exist, which frankly scares the you know what out of me, ha!
But what I’m learning day by day, is that I will only receive what I am equipped for, and by showing up daily to keep my word to myself and god for what I said I was going to do, I’m laying the foundation to sustain whatever it is that was designed for me.
So I don’t have a magical pill or potion to absolve myself of that fear of success but daily prayer, daily exercise, and in its simplest form keeping every single word I make to myself is helping me overcome my fear of success.
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Kelsea Benoit Cedric Robinson
