Angela Davis: You Were Created In Purpose, On Purpose, For a Purpose

Angela Manuel Davis

I walk out of her spin class energized and ready to do anything - even if I don't know what it is! I feel like I’ve had the best workout of my life and been to a revival at the same time (even though I’ve never even been to a revival). She said some people call her a “fitness evangelist.” She calls herself a “greatness coach.” I call her a role model.

I think she’s wonderful and I’m a total groupie, and have more than swallowed her brand of motivation. I have a “body by Angela,” I’ll tell you that. I’m now in my 50s and in the best shape of my life, and I give her all the credit. There’s a reason Oprah plucked her up and took her on the road.

AARMY is an indoor cycling studio where the music’s blasting and the lights are off and the energy’s incredible. Angela’s MY instructor, and always says “If you can dream it, you can be it.” She wants to “give people permission to dream again.” Even if people have dreams that they’ve buried deep down, she gets to “fan the flame” and “posture people for the future intended for them.”

Angela gets to “encourage the gifts and talents inside each of us.” She gets to “remind us that our dreams are valid.” She gets to “host a space of vulnerability for us to be the best version of ourselves.”

She loves to say “gets to.” That right there shows you her attitude. She gets to show up as her best version of herself every day. And she wants everyone else to do the same. It’s all attitude and choice and God - that’s Angela.

Angela LOVES doing this and it is obvious. She is on fire and present and a channel when she works. She’s constantly in action and working us all the while telling us how much we are gonna achieve and how big we need to dream. She’s ready to take her message onto every platform that can carry it. She’s clearly called to go global, it is her future - a global mandate - and she can see it. She wants to go where people feel forgotten. And she will. That’s a given. Just like breathing.

I asked her what she would say to someone feeling hopeless. She told me there’s a scripture that says “Those without hope perish.” And explained that “hope is what keeps us alive. We have to have hope.”

Angela says to anyone feeling hopeless, “Please remember that the trouble won’t always last.” “We are not given more than we can handle.” “What’s happening is happening for you, for your future.”

It reminds me that there’s always more than we can see - that we can never see the big picture, especially when we’re in it. That when we’re in it, that’s when we have to trudge the most to get to the other side. This is where all our growth occurs. And it’s why it’s called faith, because we can’t see, only believe and trust in a feeling that it’ll all somehow be okay, because it will. Even that tiny sliver of a feeling. Even if we have to borrow faith from someone else, we do it. That’s the deal. You can’t see faith - only feel it, like love and the wind (my kids said that to me when they were really little - of course today they’d deny saying any such thing!).

So we keep going. We keep trudging through. Then one day, we have just a tiny bit more faith, then a bit more, till one day, we have just a bit of our own light and then we begin to trust just a little and maybe even believe we’re gonna make it through. And really, we finally get that the full 24-hours aren’t awful, just some of them, and less than that if we allow ourselves to be with others and let them in. Until it passes and we realize that we aren’t the pain, we are more than that and we look back and it’s mostly behind us except the lessons and the growth.

That’s what Angela reminded me of - that we don’t know the big picture when we’re in the midst of the pain.

Angela got here, to this place, to this wonderful divine place, from her own hopelessness. She despaired through postpartum depression, not making the Olympic team after years of trying, the heartbreak of divorce, through her own broken and shattered dreams. Her incredible family helped her. She shares about her family a lot in class - how they read scripture together and make it palpable to younger generations, and they taught her about service and taking what you have and giving back. She was in such a dark place, in her depression. She wasn’t running track anymore. Her dad came to her and told her she needed to start running. To “run to your healing.” (How do people get these brilliant families? My kids would roll their eyes and make fun of me for 2 decades if I even intimated such a thing).

Angela’s message: “You were created in purpose, on purpose, for a purpose.” “Not one of us is an accident” is the message she takes on the road. She says “Our life is about honoring our gifts and talents by operating in our gifts and talents, which is living in our purpose.” If we don’t keep going, we don’t get to live the purpose we’ve been created for.

It was during/after/because of her postpartum depression that she started teaching spinning classes. Her husband, Jerome, got her out of the house to try it. He saw something that could get her going again. Just like her dad’s “run to your healing,” Jerome got Angela to move again and saw movement as key. The rest is history. It all starts with just one step for all of us.

This goes back to our own special spark that no one else has. Each of us has our own kind of brilliance and our very own light to shine. Angela lights our fire and shines it brighter. She puts the spotlight on each one of us, turns it up, and does NOT let up . We must keep dreaming bigger and brighter and fulfilling a higher calling. Fulfilling a higher purpose of service, of greatness, of our destiny. That’s what Angela does for me, and for everyone.

She works her Angela magic. “Can you see your dream? CAN YOU SEE IT? If you can see it, it’s not big enough! Make it bigger! Make it BIGGGGERRRR!!!” (Insert super dynamic, enthusiastic motivational jumping up and down person here). “This is your time. Your time is NOW.”

And it was during one of these (or maybe during a culmination of these passionate “motivational speeches”... whatever you call ‘em… while we’re riding like our lives depend upon it) that I knew I couldn’t let all these beautiful messages of hope sit. That I had to get them out. And I knew there’s 52 of them, so it’s 52 Weeks of Hope. Because it is your time. It’s my time.

It’s all of our time.  She’s the one who inspired me to write this book.  She is all that.  And more.

*** Angela has since opened up AARMY @AARMY Co Founder. Chief Motivation Officer| @Nike Athlete| Mom, Wife, Fitness Evangelist, Speaker

m.youtube.com/watch?v=nKRdgeNn8pA 
Note:  Angela’s classes are now luckily available to everyone ON DEMAND through the AARMY app or see the website. Angela’s gone global as predicted!