Lisa Bilyeu
speaker
1,143 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 20 Dec
Lisa Bilyeu’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
And so any decision that I end up making, I know that in 2, 3, 5, 10 years, I won't have regrets because I've looked at the situation with the utter reality of what it actually is. And now I would say I made the best decision with the knowledge that I have. So that was how I ended up saying, I love my life. I love working. I love building these businesses with my husband. Why would I change that?
Now, the final piece is listening to other people. A lot of the times, and when we make a decision and what we feel, we're like, we want to block everyone out. Don't persuade me. I don't want to hear you. Now, why are we so worried that they're going to persuade us? But if they persuade us, aren't they actually then showing us something else that we haven't seen?
So I think if my decision cannot withstand people's disagreements, people's rebuttals, then maybe I wasn't strong in my conviction in the first place. So what I then did is I allowed to listen to people to say why they think I'm crazy, to make the decision that I don't want children. So number one was my dad. Oh, who are you going to leave your money to? That was his thing.
It's like, dad, I don't live in the ancient times. A, I think if I've actually spent every last penny on like my dying bed and I'm taking my last breath and then I'm writing the last check, that's a life well lived. Then he would say, who's going to take care of you when you're older? And I thought, okay, that's actually a very valid thing.
I cannot ignore that parents do turn to their children to have that support system when they're elderly. What am I going to do? I better build a great friendship circle. I better have people around me that I've poured my heart and soul into. And just because I haven't given birth myself doesn't mean that they're not going to be around. And then the last piece is your legacy.
People always say, yeah, but what about your legacy? I had to then just ask, what the hell does that mean? People throw around phrases and you kind of repeat the phrases, but you don't actually ask yourself what that actually means, right? So I'm like, what does it actually mean to have a legacy? And I perceive the word legacy as being something that you are remembered even after death. Great.
If that's true, Do I need to birth my own children to have a legacy? And the answer is no. So that, I know it was a lot and I know that was a really long explanation, but that's how I make decisions. And that was exactly how I ended up deciding I don't want children and I just want to keep helping other women in the world.
I think the truth is that I felt like I was alone. When I was making the decision to not have children, especially, and I don't know where your listeners are from, but when you're brought up in a very heavily cultural background, like being Greek Orthodox, that's a heavy thing. And so for me, making that decision to not have kids was unheard of.
In fact, marrying someone out of my religion was unheard of. Did you see the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding? No. I did not.
It's exactly the same. So I found that the pressure, marrying someone in my culture was already pressure as it was. Marrying my husband and him asking my dad for his blessing to marry me. And my dad said no. And And I still married him was one really freaking hard because I was daddy's girl.
So how do you make a decision against the person in your life that is probably one of the most important humans, which was my dad, and then go against his wishes and How did I navigate that? So that was one of the big things where I was like, okay, unfortunately, going back to asking yourself the hard question, what does my life look like when I'm 50? What does my life look like when I'm 60?
And if nature takes its course, while it's heartbreaking to think, my dad is going to die before me. If my dad dies before me, that means he's not going to maybe be around when I turn 50. Okay. If I turn 50 and my dad's not around and I've not married the man of my dreams, who do I have to blame? I can't blame my dad.
So do I want to get to 50, not have my dad around and have made the decision on my love life that was to please him and not me? No. So that was how I was able to make the decision. Again, I listened to my dad's opinions because I think there's some validity in what he was saying because he was like, it won't work. Dad, why won't it work?
Because two cultures that don't understand each other can never work. Okay. My dad actually had a point. He actually waved a flag that while other people may either try to push out because they don't want to hear negativity or ignore, I was like, what if this is true? And so what I did is, if it was true, then me and Tom have to sit down before we get married and talk through our culture.
And that means what is important to me. If we have kids, I want them to learn Greek. If we have children, I want them to get christened Greek Orthodox. And here were all the things that were important to me. And so Tom then said the same thing. And so we were able to align on the cultural differences that I don't think we would have if my dad hadn't said it won't work.
So I take the negativity as actually a lesson and a warning sign of what I can do differently. So going back to your question, knowing that I've already upset my dad once by marrying a guy that he didn't want me to marry was hard. Now I moved to America, which is another thing is like, against your culture. You don't move that far away from your family.
In fact, my dad bought the house opposite him when I was nine years old. And he said, when you get married, you live in this house. That's, I mean, you're laughing probably because you know exactly the same thing, right?
Exactly the same. So when I think about the pressures that we get from other people, when I think about the decisions we make because we don't want to make the hard decisions, we don't want to defend ourselves and we don't want to upset people, we end up doing things that don't align with the life that we want.
And because I had done that for eight years and I made a promise to myself that I would never go back there again, I think when it got to the point where I was making a decision with children, I just said to myself, Lisa, it's your life. And if you can listen to other people and be gracious in your decisions, but make sure that it's not negotiable.
I'm not telling people so that I can negotiate whether I'm going to have children or not. I'm telling people to inform them. And if they have advice and an opinion, I'm going to listen. But this isn't a negotiation. And so I went in there knowing this wasn't a negotiation.
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