We are Laurie and Carlos and we are Beautiful Life Health & Wellness. We have been married for 11 years and since before we were married we have always wanted to start our own business. For years we didn’t know what it would be or what we would get into but the dream was there nonetheless.
Carlos is a speech therapist and has been practicing since 2010. In 2018, he became a certified health coach. Laurie has her Masters in Occupational Therapy and has been practicing since 2013. We ALWAYS wanted to work together and for the last 8 years or so we worked at the same companies in private (clinics, home health), and not-for-profit sectors of pediatric therapy, but this still wasn’t enough for us. Something was still missing.
As pediatric therapists, it didn’t take long to feel the fulfilling joy of working with children and their families, but it also didn’t take long to feel the complete and total burn out of giving and giving in our “all-in” style of treating our kiddos and their families. The demands for productivity in our industry are extreme, and over the last decade, our state of Texas has cut more and more funding for our children and their families. The effects of this bled into our lives in the form of extreme stress and burnout.
The days were long and the needs of our patients and their families were deep. Every circumstance was different. Every family had different needs. Different stress. Many times the same, yes, but always a different flavor. Often, we’d get home, exhausted mentally, physically, and spiritually. Their stress became our stress. As empaths, their heartache became our heartache. We so desperately wanted to help everyone even if it meant giving beyond our own energies. Even if it meant giving when we had nothing left to give. And we did. For years we carried on this way. Always exhausted. Always on the edge. The work never stopped. There was always another patient, another family in need, more help needed somewhere.
Often, our weekends revolved around playing catch up. Most weekends you could catch us doing, nothing. Rest was all we would muster up. The Sunday blues would hit as the inevitable Monday return to the grind would near.
We finally reached a point where we decided that there was no way we could keep up this pace for another 10 years. We began to learn more and more about our own health and wellness outside of just physical exercise and became more and more responsible for it. We decreased our workload after prioritizing our paychecks over our own health for far too long. We found ways to make it work financially. Not only that, we decided to invest around $10K in ourselves to seek more knowledge around stress resiliency in hopes for a deep change in our stress. It didn’t take long as Carlos learned more while studying to become a health coach, to find relief from our own thoughts and behaviors that lead to more stress. Laurie took occupational therapy continuing education courses around stress resiliency, behavior change, and thoughts that lead to stress. More and more as the months carried on we found ourselves feeling more and more relief from stress and the dreaded burnout.
We knew then that we wanted to share what we’d not only learned, but accomplished in such a short period of time with others that were feeling the same! Feeling so much better, we wanted to shout it from the mountaintops to anyone who would listen. It was amazing to us that relief from burnout was possible! It could be reversed! Years and years of doing things a certain way could be changed! All at once, things became clearer. What we would do and what we would create as a business became apparent.
Though we felt tremendous relief in stress, ultimately we began to understand that our workload (despite being reduced) was still the culprit in the remaining unwanted stress in our lives. Working for someone else became more and more intolerable. This was the beginning of the end as our time working for someone else. Despite our newfound stress resiliency practices we quickly came to understand one thing: You can't outrun a job that isn’t making you happy anymore. You can’t yoga it away. You can’t meditate it away. You can’t workout till it's all better. The universe spoke to us in many ways but, ultimately it told us one thing; “It’s time for something different.”
2020. This past year we were furloughed from our jobs as therapists and decided that this was finally time to put all of our efforts into Beautiful Life after a couple of years of trying to start a business while we both had full-time jobs. Despite the crazy year and all the changes it brought, our courage was up for the task. Terrified, we resigned from our previous employer and began this new adventure. Nothing in years felt so good. It made music in our spirits! It was like the universe had a party in our hearts and the theme was, “Yes, this way please!”
So here we are. Creating something that’s not just ours but yours. Something that will create ripples of love for lifetimes to come. That's our dream. To serve. To continue to give but on our terms. Quality over quantity. To fill our cups and give from the overflow. We settled on ‘Beautiful Life’ after much thought because it means, YOU. You are a BEAUTIFUL LIFE and we honor you as such. Often we take walks and talk excitedly about all the people we will meet in the future and how honored we already are to anyone that would take a chance and work with us. We believe your life is truly beautiful. We see you as something beautiful beyond your physical self with your own story and experiences. We know if you’re reading this it’s due to the possibility that we’ve been walking towards each other our whole lives leading up to this moment. We know if you’re reading this, more than likely we’ve shared some of the same experiences and stressors. We can’t tell you enough how honored we are that you’d consider us as your coaches. We are proud of the tremendous value we can bring to your life. When enough is enough and you’re ready to take the next step, we will be here to make sure you feel safe. It’s a big decision and we understand that, but it’s an investment in yourself that will pay dividends for a lifetime.
With Love,
Laurie & Carlos