Shelli Varela

Transcript

I believe on the day we draw our last breath the person we are gets to meet the person we could have become our job in that blink of time is to close the gap at the beginning of my journey I'm a 108 pound 20 year old misfits high on anxiety low on confidence I feasibly quit everything I started it seemed like everybody around me knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives they knew the jobs they would land how many kids they'd have I was a hot mess my buddy Steve however was a firefighter and he was the epitome of clarity and purpose

seeing as I had time on my hand trying to figure my stuff out I started spending a lot of time with him and something interesting happened because I would have never known otherwise that I had a natural mechanical aptitude as he talked about these amazing fires that he had and rescues that he conducted and I remember thinking to myself dude that's your job but week's turned to months and stories turn to lessons and I was hanging off his every word and one day he turns to me and he says Shelley why don't you just apply which was clearly the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard

I was a hundred and eight pounds I had no related skills knowledge or experience but something inside me that day stirred you know just a little I went that home that night and I'm lying in bed looking up at my white stiffled ceiling and I said three words that changed the rest of my life and those words were why not me and in that moment something magical happened because I didn't care what it cost in blood sweat money timer tears I was going to be a firefighter I battled and I bruised my body getting it ready and I learned about fire pumps and friction loss

some days I was in so much physical pain I actually the log-roll myself out of and I battled for 1162 days but on the 1160 third day my phone rang shelley Varela it's deputy chief Morden we'd like to welcome you aboard as our city's first female firefighter but what I realized is if 108 five pound misfit could hack possibility we all can and that the stories that we tell ourselves have the ability to keep us stuck I was surrounded by amazing individuals a powder keg of potentials creators and messengers and entrepreneurs who had so much potential but they just felt stuck and so for the

next 20 years i kept getting asked about my journey and for the longest time I found it intrusive why is everybody asking me about my thing but then one day a lady said to me Shelley thank you so much for sharing your story I see myself in your story and I thought there were things that I couldn't do but now I'm gonna go do them and I realized the power of story because logic is so busy infiltrating our heads with data in information we're so busy thinking about the time we have and the possibility we don't but we need to think about the possibility we

have and the time we don't I realize that when we are able to reframe our inner stories what we deem possible we're able to change what becomes feasible and what we can project ourselves towards and what we can actually accomplish and when we do that what we get to tell the world that story that we get to leave behind us when we're gone changes and most importantly we can change the world with our story I made it my mission to help these heroes find their capes and find their stories because the truth is a story is nothing more than that snapshot in time and your

perspective in that snapshot and what you learn and what you can teach with it I believe on the day we draw our last breath the person we are gets to meet the person we could have become our job in that blink of time is to close the gap

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