The incredible Ria Story shares her beautiful love and relationship insights.
Ria is a worldwide speaker, author, and trainer. She was sexually abused by her father from age 12 until she left home at 19, and trafficked by him to men he would meet off the internet. When Ria left home, she didn’t have a job, money, or a high school diploma. She could have spent her life being a victim, but instead chose to be proactive in the face of adversity.
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast. I’m relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin. I’ll help you create more connection and fun with others, especially your daughter-in-law.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, Episode #132: Bitter or Better with Ria Story
I love observing and connecting with other humans. Especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Ria sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right Ria, tell us a little bit about you.
Oh LeAnn, thanks for having me on your show. Super excited to be here with you. A little bit about me, I teach leadership and life skills, targeting mostly intended for women, leadership and life skills for women. I like to say that I like to help women become the leaders people want to follow and then help them develop the team that they want to lead.
So, I really think that that’s kind of where my heart is, is helping leaders, women leaders understand first they can lead themselves in order to increase their influence with other people. So I’m a speaker, author, and trainer.
That is amazing. And I think that’s so true, like leading ourselves first and then others. That’s so beautiful. All right, so how do you incorporate love into your business and life, and how does that impact your relationships?
Well, that’s an interesting question. It’s interesting, number one, because nobody’s ever asked me that before, which I love. Because most of the time, my husband and I speak together. We kind of have his mind in our lanes, so to speak. We both teach leadership and personal growth principles. His niche is more blue collar leadership. And mine, obviously, being leadership for women is a little different, but we mostly speak together. And the principles that we teach are the same, whether you’re a CEO or a high-schooler, the principles that help you increase your influence and lead yourself at a high level are the same. The stories we share might change, right, depending on the audience. So that’s first and foremost.
We obviously being married, because we got married because we love each other and we actually like each other. And what we realized is that when you live, work and travel with the same person 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you have to do more than just love that person. You have to like them, right? So that’s first and foremost.
Mostly what we do is we speak for free pretty much all over the country. Well all over the country and even sometimes internationally. And the way we do that is we tell leaders or organizations or groups or conferences, if you’ll buy 300 of our books direct from us, we have 34 books between the two of us. Oh my goodness. Wow. That’s cool. We tell any group you buy 300 books directly from us and we will go anywhere in the country. We pay our own expenses, and we speak for up to two hours for free.
And the reason why we do that, two reasons. Number one, we got into what we do because we were more interested in making a difference than making a dollar. And we figured out if you make enough difference, the dollars take care of themselves, right? But to do that, you have to love being able to pour into other people.
You know, when we first got started down this path of speaking and training, everyone was like, go for big speaking fees and, you know, try to get the high dollar stages. And we got to that point of, you know, being paid up to $20,000 to speak. And then we’re like, wait a minute, we didn’t get into this for that reason. And so that’s when we started saying, you buy the books and we’ll speak for free, and you get the books, right? So that’s part of it.
The other reason we’re so passionate about that is because transformation is not going to happen in a day, right? It doesn’t matter what we say in a keynote or a session. People need a resource to continue their growth after we are gone. And so the books are a way to continue to do that. So we just try to motivate people to get inspired and to investing in themselves and their own growth. And then they have a resource to do that.
You know what we find is that we are incredibly blessed. We travel all over the country today doing just that. That is amazing. I had no idea and I’m going to have to start reading some of these books. That’s awesome. That is really cool. And the fact that you go with your husband everywhere ah, that’s really cool.
Yeah we enjoy it. It was a little bit of a learning curve when we first started. I wanted to be the speaker and he wanted to be a trainer. And so I started speaking and he wasn’t even on stage with me. He was very supportive, he’d sit in the back, he would cheerlead, and I would get on stage and, you know, speak at a keynote or something.
And then we figured out, well, speaking or training, it’s not much different, really. And so then we started trying to get to do it together, and then he wouldn’t let me talk, he had so much to say, and I’m like, wait a minute, I get to talk here sometimes too, but we figured it out.
That is awesome. Oh, good for you. Well so tell me, what is something you love about you and why?
Oh, something I love about me. You know, the number one thing I think I would say is I love the fact that, not every day, I’m certainly not perfect at it, but most days I wake up and I look at the joy of life. I look at the blessings and the opportunities of the day.
And, you know, I always say we don’t get to choose what happens to us in life. We can take what life gives us and be bitter about it or better because of it. We don’t get to always choose the hand that we’re played, or the cards that we’re dealt, but we choose how we play them. And you know, that’s particularly important to me.
I left home at 19. I was sexually abused by my father from age 12 and until I left and trafficked by him to men he would meet off of the internet, and I didn’t have anything when I left home. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a high school diploma. I’d never been to school.
Wow. And, you know, back in those years, there were times when life was almost not worth living. And I thought about it, a tub of warm water and a razor blade, because when you’re in a season of such darkness, right, it’s hard to see that there can be a way through it. And so what I say now is it’s kind of like being in a heavy fog, but you have to keep driving through that fog if you want to get to the other side.
And I couldn’t have said all of this back then, but after I left home, I realized I could spend the rest of my life being a victim and blaming a lack of success on what happened to me. Or I could say, you know what, I’m going to be stronger because of it. Wow. And you know, it’s not an easy choice, right?
Adversity is something we all experience at some point. And I just realized that it’s not always easy to be positive and proactive in the face of adversity. But it’s a choice. Joy. Joy is not a product of our circumstances. It’s a choice we make. Yes. It’s a choice we make. Yes. So joy again, I don’t get it right every day. Somebody asked me one time. They’re like, do you ever have bad days? Yeah, we all have bad days. But most of the time I wake up and think, you know, I choose to have joy today. I choose to live with joy.
That is so incredible. And especially given the terrible, terrible circumstances that you had as a teenager, young adult, like going through all of that. And then now choosing joy and going through all of that. Like what an example, what a blessing. I love that so much. That’s really cool.
Well, and you know, someone once told me, they’re like, God will give you a double measure. If you’re a person of faith, you know, a lot of people will say, God will give you a double measure. And I say, you don’t understand, he already has. Already has, right? But so much of the time we spend our time and energy focusing on what we don’t have and we miss what we do have right in front of us.
That is so, so, so true. Thank you. All right, well, I love talking about connection with others and ourselves, and I think the daughter-in-law relationship is packed full of endless examples to learn from. So any thoughts about being a daughter-in-law?
Oh, so many. I don’t yet have a daughter-in-law myself, so absolutely speaking to my experience. Number one, the term daughter-in-law. I totally understand that why we call it a daughter-in-law, because legally, it’s a legal relationship when you get married, and so it’s a daughter-in-law, by law, but how much different could that relationship be positively viewed if we just said daughter, right, or instead, mother-in-love. I’m blessed with an incredible mother-in-love, and I use, you know, I use the term instead. I love that Ria. In love. I gotta remember that.
Just, it shifts it. And these days, I certainly might call her Joanne, but most of the time it’s just mom because she’s filled a lot of that, you know, she doesn’t treat me any differently than her children in terms of the love that she’s extended and the care and compassion. And, you know, she’s just an incredible example of someone who loves wholeheartedly, right? And definitely someone to learn from. So that’s number one is I think, wow, could we just make the term more positive overall? And I think that could be improved on. Mm hmm.
And number two, I think that that relationship can be incredibly special. There again, this is just an extension of your family, right? I would hope that you wouldn’t treat that daughter-in-law any differently than you, it is a little different, right? But so far as the relationship itself, it’s just another extension of your family. And I love when people have that perspective.
And there again, every relationship could have rocky moments. I have the best mother-in-law in the world, so I’ve got her already. Nobody else can have one as good as mine because I have her. But at the end of the day, most of us, there again, if we would learn to build a relationship based on what we have in common instead of our differences, I think that can be a beautiful relationship.
Okay, that is amazing. I will forever think of that as daughter-in-love or mother-in-love, which shifts everything. That’s beautiful. And well, I’m sure I didn’t come up with the term, so I just want to throw that out there. I’m so glad you did because what a great way to reframe, especially for those people who are struggling in that relationship to drop the in-law and switch to in-love or just drop it all together, and just daughter or mother. Yeah, that is beautiful. And it sounds like your mother-in-law is a rock star. I should say mother-in-love. Yes. That’s so cool. All right. Well, anything else you’d like to share and where can our audience go to find out more about you?
You know, I think I said this already, but the one thing I always share is that we can take what life gives us. Be bitter about it or better because of it. And it’s not an easy choice, but it’s possible. And like most anything, the more frequently we make that choice and get it right, the easier it becomes. It’s Oprah Winfrey who said, what we focus on expands, and I go on to say, what we look for we will find. And so true, right? What we look for in people, we will find, positive or negative. So I like to just share that perspective.
People can find me: I’m on social, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can just find me on my website: riastory.com. That’s the best way, and my phone number’s right there. If you have questions about personal growth or leadership, absolutely feel free to give me a call. I love that. And I’ll put all that information in the show notes too. Excellent. All right. So what is your favorite quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships?
I had to dig a bit for this one because, you know, there again, these are some questions I don’t get asked a lot, which is kind of why it’s kind of cool because it’s something a little different. One of the quotes that I wanted to share is: “Love yourself enough to realize it’s not about you, but it begins in you. Start loving, start with loving yourself and then extend that love to others.”
And the reason I say that is so much of the time when we have conflict in a relationship, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, any other relationship really, the principle applies, but we spend a lot of time focusing on waiting for the other person to get better. And it’s Hal L. Rodson: “The moment we take responsibility for everything is the moment we can change anything.” We cannot control other people. We cannot fix other people. But the reason we blame other people is because there’s only one other choice. And as long as I’m blaming someone or something else, I don’t have to do anything to fix it, which is very easy, right? And it’s human nature. But so many relationships could be so much better if I quit worrying about fixing the other person or waiting on them to get better and just say, I’m going to take responsibility for what I can do to make this relationship better.
We all think we have to be somebody for the world to change, but in truth, the world changes when we change. And our little corner of the world gets better when we get better. Our family gets better, our community gets better, company gets better. And so if we quit waiting on everyone else, if we’ll just take responsibility for leading ourselves, proactively, the world gets better. And the beautiful thing about that is you don’t have to wait.
That yes, yes, yes, yes. I love that so much. So start with loving yourself and then extend that love to others. Hmmm, something to think about.
Thank you Ria for sharing your love insights with us. So appreciate you. Oh, absolutely. And it’s just a privilege. I appreciate you and what you do. Ah, thank you.
Well, have a good one y’all, and here’s to bitter or better, connection and love.
If you enjoyed this podcast, take a look at my Connection Crew Program and One-on-One Coaching options by checking out the show notes. In those programs, I teach and coach a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in your relationships. I also share how I have created a beautiful relationship with my daughters-in-law.
And if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter-in-law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
