May 11, 2018
From the outside (aka Instagram) looking in, Adrienne Bosh looks like one of those moms who has achieved perfect, blissful balance.
Entrepreneur? Check.
Mother of five? Check.
Wife to a supportive NBA-star husband Chris Bosh? Check.
Yup, it seems like a postcard from her world would read, “Greetings, from perfection!”—but the truth is, Bosh deals with the same internal doubts and insecurity that can torment the best of us.
“What people don’t see are all the times I doubt myself, all the times I’m hard on myself, all the times when nothing ever seems good enough,” Bosh tells Shine.
"What people don’t see are all the times I doubt myself, all the times I’m hard on myself, all the times when nothing ever seems good enough."- Adrienne Bosh
An Instagram picture is worth a thousand words—but it offers zero insight into the words running through someone’s head.
Here are Bosh’s top three tips on how she works daily to remix her inner critic into her biggest supporter.
Challenge the ‘Perfect Plan’
Bosh's inner critic loves to feed on things that don't go perfectly, but she's worked hard to ease up on that reflex. She told Shine about one particularly difficult time: when she dreamed up and opened her own boutique in Miami back in 2015.
She’d planned the perfect launch, the perfect outfit to wear on launch day, the perfect way her vision could come to life—but then, reality hit. A few months before the store opened, she found out she was pregnant with twins. At the same time, her husband went through a health scare that forced him to take a step back from the NBA.
Long story short: Nothing went according to her “perfect” plan when she opened the doors to her store, named Sparkle and Shine Darling. Bosh’s inner critic seized the moment, poised to ruin the glory of seeing her dream—a dream two years in the making—finally fulfilled. But luckily, her inner supporter came through.
“I realized I don’t want to sit here picking apart something because it wasn’t A-plus perfect,” she says. “I spent time and gave it my best and even if it’s not perfect, that’s OK because I got it out. And once you get it out, it’s just repetition and growing and learning that’s going to make it better.”
Honor Your Real
Another thing Bosh has learned: When things don't go perfectly, she actually can connect with other people more authentically.
By the end of her store’s launch day, Bosh—feeling pregnant, stressed, and overwhelmed—quickly learned that her friends and customers actually connected more with the authentic version of her, rather than a perfect facade.
“I realized, I didn’t want ‘perfect,’” she says. “And my community didn’t want perfect. They wanted ‘real.’ Real me—tired, driven, and pregnant working my butt off to open up this store.”
The doors to her store have since closed, but what Bosh takes from the experience is this: she has the power to choose to be her toughest critic or her biggest supporter. And every day, she’s working to choose the latter.
Choose Peace Over Worry
Finally, Bosh reminds herself on a daily basis that she gets to control what type of track runs through her head.
“If I do what feels like my best for my business, for my family, and for my soul, I can choose peace over worry,” she says. “I can focus more on the present. I can let go of some of the pressure I put on myself.”
"I can focus more on the present. I can let go of some of the pressure I put on myself."- Adrienne Bosh
Her advice to moms and others who don’t feel enough compared to other people: know you’re not alone in feeling that way, and know the love that matters most is your own.
“When you listen to anything outside yourself or those people who don’t have your best wellbeing at heart—that’s when you can start to question everything,” she says. “I’ve had pains, struggles, scars—but if anything, it shows how amazing and how awesome I am at healing. You’re always worthy of the love you give yourself.”
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