Simone Mathieu

I attribute my success to my mom. You know, growing up in the Caribbean, we lacked a lot of opportunity, but the values that she instilled in us - we just celebrated her 80th birthday, so we are so proud to have this major celebration. We had a very humble upbringing, but she instilled so many important values in us. During my speech at her event, I reminded her that she always told us growing up to remember who you are, to remember who you are - not your circumstances, you're not where you come from, you are where you're gonna go in life. Even though she only had a third grade education, many of us have become incredibly successful because she instilled so many important values in us, that there was no limit. And I think that is why my website says, take the limits off your potential, because way too many of us put too many limits on what we can and cannot do, and so we do not get to fully experience life. So I certainly attribute my success to the foundation that my mom created for me. She always found a way to not only feed us, but to feed our neighbors every day. So despite our limited resources, she always found a way to give back to her community in some particular way. Her mentorship in terms of just life in general, the way you approach life, and putting out that positive karma - she always reminds us that what we put out into the world, good or bad, is gonna come back to us. So she's certainly been a very important mentor in my life.

The best career advice I've ever received is to pretty much follow your path and remain open to what the universe has for you. You know, it's always a struggle when you're getting started on a career path, but the thing that has kept me motivated the most is just knowing that I, too, have a purpose, so I follow my own purpose-driven life in terms of what I believe is my true calling. And I think that my true calling has always been to educate, right? So whether it is education in the form of being an associate professor of psychology or education in the form of being a behavior change specialist. So, just remaining true to your path. Remaining true to your path and not being distracted, because we all know there's too many distractions in the world, so the ability to focus and remaining true to your purpose-driven life. And it's not just advice for me, but also advice for those that I have the honor of serving. So that's what I always tell them - that you, too, have a particular purpose, but again, where most of us are lacking is that consistency factor. So if you remain consistent, then you will realize the purpose that you've been placed in this world for.

The advice I would give to young women entering my industry today is find your own niche. Because I find so many of us are trying to just duplicate what we see others are doing, and I think that is how I was able to come up with the Push Past 10 movement. Rather than focusing on what everybody else was doing, I did a lot of introspection. So, I looked inside, and I figured out what was the particular message that was placed on my heart to share to the world. And so, what it ended up being, and the idea of Push Past 10 is, if you remain consistent on pursuing a particular goal every day for 10 minutes, if you just convince yourself that I need to do this for 10 minutes every day, you will be surprised at the momentum that that creates, and it allows you to go from 10 minutes to an hour, past an hour every day, and then before you know it, you are on the path of achieving your goal. So that is the concept of Push Past 10, and that came to me because I stayed in quiet, in silence, in introspection. So, my advice to any young woman who's looking to pursue her own particular goal is to do some introspection. Forget all the distractions, all the social media distractions, all the other distractions in the world, and look within you to find the message, to find the path that is destined for you, that has been ordained for you, and then pursue that opportunity.

The biggest challenge is - I'm going to focus on the behavior change specialist aspects of this - the biggest opportunity, because a lot of the clientele that we serve are lower-income families. So the biggest challenges right now is just being able to reach them in a meaningful way, to kind of get them to understand, because many times we think of chronic diseases, but we don't think of it as something that will necessarily happen to us. So, we do not take the necessary steps to combat those illnesses. So, the biggest challenges we face is just that disconnect of how do we convince people that we need to invest now in our health, so that we can combat those chronic lifestyle diseases in the future, and also being able to pass on that generational health, because many times we talk about generational wealth, but we don't necessarily focus enough on generational health. So, I think that's the biggest challenge for us, just trying to convince our community of the importance of investing in their health today for tomorrow. And then the biggest successes, I'm gonna say, is just watching the collaborations and the partnerships that are evolving around the space of health and wellness. So whether it's through the POWER program that I mentioned, the mayor's office, Make Atlanta Your Gym, UGA, the Diabetes Prevention Program, or Clayton Health District, just looking at the collaboration and the synergies that are coming together so that we can continue to pursue this goal of empowering our communities to live healthier lives.

The values that are most important to me in my work and personal life is being authentically me. So, knowing who I am and what I stand for, and a particular value that has carried me through my life is the importance of education. So, yes, the importance of family, the importance of believing in a higher power, but in particular, the importance of education. And not just education in terms of educating myself, but education in terms of what do I offer to the world around me? So it is one thing to educate yourself for your own personal purpose. But I believe a true measure of success is what are you giving back to the community. So not just educating yourself to pursue your own personal goals, but then how are you going to take that education and positively impact your community? And I think it is evident in everything that I'm doing, whether it is, you know, being a professor, being a behavior change specialist, or even in my radio programs, because that is what I emphasize and kind of showcase. Those who are on the path of success and also the challenges that they face, and how they're able to overcome those challenges to remain successful in pursuing those goals. So absolutely, I'm going to say the most important value to me is education.