Meet Blessing Bromgard

We were lucky to catch up with Blessing Bromgard recently and have shared our conversation below.

Blessing, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

I have always been very stubborn, by nature that’s just who I am. When there is something I want out of life or a goal I want to achieve, I stop at nothing to realize that goal. That stubbornness, that will to get to where ever it is I want to go no matter what it takes, has propelled me forward even in the darkest, most difficult times. I have knowingly struggled with anxiety and her twin sister depression since I was in college and unknowingly, likely, since high school or even younger. I was bullied from a very young age by almost everyone, including teachers and principals that, in essence, would ask me what I did to provoke people into bullying me. Basically the leaders that were supposed to be keeping me safe and helping me to succeed scholastically were asking me what I did to deserve the harassment. That trauma and neglect instilled a deep social anxiety from an early age. It made simple things, like hanging out with friends I’d known for years, incredibly uncomfortable. I would over-analyze every syllable, every movement, every thought, the whole time thinking “am I making a fool of myself right now?” This deep seeded fear of rejection, fear of public humiliation, is what kept me from running full speed at my true passion: performance. I passed up so many open doors, so many opportunities for the spotlight, because I was terrified of making a fool of myself and being humiliated just as I was as a child. After years of letting myself down, listening to anxiety’s lies, I decided enough was enough and that I wanted to go after my craziest idea yet: starting a business. I was too stubborn to give up another dream because everyone *else* told me I wasn’t good enough and that I would never make it. Even with my own stubbornness to succeed on my side, the journey still wasn’t easy. Daily I would have to fend off intrusive thoughts of “they said you weren’t good enough, so you should quit before you inevitably fail,” and “they’re just going to laugh at you,” and “you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll be a laughing stock.” Every business meeting I had, I had to stave off the noise inside my head that begged me to quit before I was humiliated. Every self doubt amplified by a chemical imbalance. The only thing that kept me going was my own stubbornness that success was my only option, the whole time reminding myself not to buy into anxiety and depression. After what seemed like an eternity of putting up a daily internal fight against my own head, determined to prove everyone, even myself, wrong, I launched my first business. I still have days where I struggle to get out of bed, where I let the thoughts win, but now I get to show myself how far I have come despite overwhelming odds. I have physical proof to show myself that perseverance and patience pay off in the face of adversity. Even when that adversity is literally staring back at you as you look in the mirror. It’s still not easy, but being stubborn sure helps.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

When I was younger I never felt like I had a safe space. At home I was walking on egg shells, afraid to make waves, and at school I was silenced when I tried to stand up for myself or others. My mission for the past few years has been to create a safe space for people like me to feel heard, accepted, and supported. With that vision in mind, I started my TikTok channel, “ijust.likeb,” to be an extension of not just my personal brand, but also of my business BananaLeaf. It wasn’t enough for me to have my own business, I wanted to also find a way to help out anyone else that struggled to find their place in the world just as I have. BananaLeaf was born out of the joy I get from my hobby of keeping plants and ijust.likeb was born out of the need to extend a safe place to others like me. Together, I can reach the world on two fronts, being the face of an online safe space and extending the joy of plant keeping to others. With BananaLeaf, customers can take part in and spread the joy they feel from plant keeping, or if that’s not their thing, they can come to the online safe space and watch uplifting videos or attend lives. The end goal for BananaLeaf is to open a physical store front and continue to sell the products I have stocked online, but for now it remains exclusively online. We actually just relaunched the BananaLeaf brand with some new products and some original BananaLeaf products as well, with more new products yet to come.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Determination, a thirst for knowledge, and the ability to accept losing are key if you want to start your own business or obtain any goal you set for yourself. No one is going to do it for you, you have to be willing to put in the work yourself. You might not know everything you need to know when you start out on your journey, but that’s ok. None of us know everything, we all have had to learn something new in order to “get the job done,” but you have to start. Know it will always be hardest in the beginning but it gets easier the more seasoned you become. There will be losses along the way as well, but if you are willing to learn from them, you will go further than you ever thought possible. If you give up the first time you fail at something, you will never get anywhere and that’s the hard truth. Failure is just part of the journey so embrace it, learn from it.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

Absolutely to be well rounded. While we can’t “do it all,” it is still invaluable to continue to improve ourselves and strengthen the weakest parts of our beings. Being successful is knowing where you are weak and working on those parts of yourself in order to become a well rounded individual; stepping outside of our comfort zones to do what is uncomfortable to fulfill our full potentials. Don’t forget about your strengths, but by solely focusing on them. eventually your weaknesses will get in the way and will keep you from fully fulfilling your purpose. My mentor that helped me get into online selling initially had a motto – 1% better. That’s to say, if we strive to be just 1% better today than we were yesterday, we can become unstoppable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bananaleaftx.etsy.com
• Instagram: https://ijust.likeb
• Other: TikTok: ijust.likeb