Focus On The Good Podcast
Welcome to Focus on the Good — a podcast for women ready to build a life and business rooted in purpose, passion, and peace.
Hosted by Mackenna Dugan — 6-figure elopement photographer, mama of 3, and soulful entrepreneur — this show is for creative women, mothers, and dreamers who want real talk on motherhood, mindset, and starting (or scaling) a passion-based business.
Expect solo episodes, raw personal stories, and grounded tools to help you stay inspired, aligned, and focused on what truly matters.
Subscribe to join a growing movement of women doing life and business differently — with heart, vision, and a whole lot of grace.
#mompreneur #womeninbusiness #spiritualentrepreneur #purposedrivenlife
Focus On The Good Podcast
Faith Through Fire: How Mindset Shapes Reality
What if your hardest moments weren’t the end of your story but the training ground for who you’re meant to become? We sit down with Kandice Delgado to trace the arc from an unconventional childhood and index-card goal lists to an international makeup career, a best-selling book, and a growing community for creatives, Make Up Your Mindset. Along the way, we unpack the real mechanics of manifestation—faith, visualization, and relentless follow-through—and the deeper work of healing: therapy, EMDR, honesty in the mirror, and systems that make good days repeatable.
We talk about reclaiming authorship from trauma, why you’re not your feelings, and how to build a morning routine that actually changes your life. Kandice shares how “meet God in the field” became a daily practice: Scripture to anchor identity, meditation to hold the vision, walks to embody outcomes, and writing to keep momentum. We explore resilience through loss and heartbreak, the humility of saying “I don’t know,” and the courage to hold strong convictions loosely enough to keep growing. If you’ve ever felt the whisper “you were meant for more,” this conversation gives it language, tools, and a path forward.
You’ll learn practical steps to start where you are: write down who you’re becoming, build a simple system you’ll keep, treat every interaction like your business card, and give yourself permission to dream bigger than feels safe. Come for the inspiration, stay for the blueprint—because mindset shapes reality when belief meets action.
If this resonated, follow, share with a friend who needs the reminder, and leave a quick review to help more people find these stories. Your support helps us keep making conversations that matter.
Get your copy of Kandice's and Mackenna's best selling book "Slaying Vegas" : https://a.co/d/iRzupHA
Follow Kandice on IG & TikTok: [@KandiceDelgado]
👇 Listen now & start your transformation:
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Oh, I'm a prior. I'm surprised I haven't cried yet in all of the podcasts, the two podcasts that I filmed.
SPEAKER_03:I'm the one that broke my.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I was I kind of knew it was coming because when I was reading your chapter, I was literally sitting outside with my husband yesterday morning drinking coffee, and I'm just bawling and I'm just like, I'm so moved right now. So I knew I was gonna cry. Um, so I wanted to like highlight that you mentioned your aunt and uncle, and in your chapter, you wrote a lot about how they included you in their family and that they were like role models to you. Talk to me a little bit more about that. So your cousins, you kind of grew up with them like in the environment. Like I know you lived with your grandma and you were adopted by them, but you got to like be around your aunt and uncle and your cousins a lot, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, growing up with my grandma, you're growing up with the woman that had all the children. Yeah. So I was always going to all of her kids' houses and we stayed very close. We're a very close-knit family, even though quote unquote, we would be unconventional or even dysfunctional to other people. That's what I grew up hearing. You have a dysfunctional family. Oh, wow. And you know what I mean? Like you grow up hearing these terms if something's unconventional. But I like to use that word obviously a lot. It was unconventional. It wasn't dysfunctional, it was just different. And so, yeah, I grew up a lot around my cousins, and everybody, since I didn't have parents and they knew you could just see it on my family's faces that they always wanted to include me with their children. And there's especially my aunt and uncle, they're divorced, but they in particular really always made sure there was a seat at the table for me. My uncle is an immigrant and he came here and he has this beautiful immigrant story of when he kissed came here, he kissed the ground when he got to America. Oh my gosh, wow. And he was a motivational speaker. He's John Maxwell certified. He wrote the book The Purpose-Driven Life. Um, or I don't think it's called The Purpose Driven Life. I'm sorry. I think I forgot what the book is called. He's gonna kill me. I didn't plug you in correctly. Kill me later. But he wrote a book, and um it was just so, so, so amazing. He would tell us as we were little girls, he would sit us down, and I think we were as young as seven, and he did this with us our entire life. He said, You're gonna write on an index card your goals and you're gonna keep them as close to your heart on your physical body every day. And when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna read your goal. And when you go to bed at night, you're gonna read your goal. Wow. And he made sure I did that with his girls. He never left me out of a single conversation that they had. And my aunt is like your dream mother. Like when you hug her, you feel home. I swear anybody could hug her off the street and they'd be like, Can I just hug this woman? And she was just like, You're my daughter, you're my girl. Like they just all took me in, and I witnessed so much love that it taught me exactly what I wanted and the type of mother I wanted to be, and the type of man I would want to choose for my children. And, you know, just all those things. So I was always enveloped in such a love. And ironically, their daughters became my very best friends. They're like my sisters, they're not even my cousins. Yeah, they're my sisters, and together we created the community called Make Up Your Mindset. Yeah. Which, through the power of our mindset, we've honestly, we truly believe in it. It your mindset shapes your reality. Yes. And how you choose to see everything and the perspective you hold shapes your reality. And so a lot of the times, a lot of people are asking, my cousin's a celebrity makeup artist, a very popular celebrity makeup artist in LA. And um, everybody's asking us how we got to where we got, and we finally just were like, we want to tell them everything, we want to show them the nitty-gritty and how much the self and inner work really controls your outer dialogue in the world.
SPEAKER_05:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And if we can help even one person just get on their feet the way that we did and realize that it doesn't matter where you come from, you can come from a rich family and they can still do damage to you. You can have parents. Yes. The world, you do not come out unscathed. And you know, it so it doesn't really matter that I came from an unlikelier circumstances and then my cousins had parents and had all these things. None of that matters because none of us come out unscathed. Your mindset really matters, and how you view your trials and your circumstances and how you use them to stand up. So that's basically we created that community together and we've been working at it over the past eight months. And so it's really just one of our little babies. It's one of our brand new babies, and we're babying it.
SPEAKER_00:It's so exciting. It truly is such, I mean, I love the play on words, make up your mindset, because obviously it's space for makeup artists. Um, but it's so powerful to really teach people the power of your mindset. I 100% attribute all of the success that I've had in my life, like not just like the accolades, right? Like my relationship with my husband, my relationship with my kids, or how I show up as a friend, how I show up as like a daughter, a sister, a friend. All of those things is because of my mindset. I was able to look at my past. I was able to look at the traumatic experiences that I've had and choose to rise above them and rewrite the story for myself. And that was something that you actually said that I really loved. You wrote that the truth is trauma doesn't just shape us. It will try to narrate our story. And healing is about reclaiming the pen. I can so relate to that because for me, when I was diving into my spiritual awakening and learning to like take ownership of my life, I had to go back and address some things about these belief systems that I that I had adopted from the traumatic experiences that I had. And I had to rewrite the story and choose to be empowered by the things that I went through and feel really grateful for them because I am who I am because of them. And I reclaimed that pen and I took ownership of my life and I rewrote the story. So I was able to literally change what had happened to me by shifting my mindset about it. And it changed my whole life. The whole trajectory of my life changed because I was able to rewrite the story.
SPEAKER_01:I love that so much because that is exactly what it takes. Like people, if I can do anything, if we can do anything, I think it's like wanting to give people that gift that we had. Like it's so simple as a perspective shift. And, you know, even if it's the worst thing that happened to you, I truly believe even that will be the platform that you stand on to light the path for others and for yourself. And it really is everything. Like it affects the mother you are, the wife you are, the girlfriend, the cousin, the friend, all of those things so much. And um, yeah, I really, really, really believe that reclaiming your narrative and taking perspective on it, it not only unleashes you, but it unleashes everybody around you.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:You know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you can't pour from an empty cup. So the foundation and everything about your life has to start with doing what's best for you and becoming the better version of yourself takes radical ownership of your life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, it's about taking care of yourself. I think like now self-care is such a trend and it's being talked about so much. And this is what our, this is what social media does and everything does in our culture. They'll take something and they'll take it to the extreme, to where people are like, okay, I'm putting on the face mask at night and I'm trimming my cuticles, and I'm like, you know what I mean? Like healing, and you know what I mean? And it's like this oversensory, and people like miss it. Yes, it is. Like, you really do have to take care of yourself. But what taking care of yourself really looks like is being honest with yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And sitting in the mirror and saying, is there something unhappy or unfulfilled in me? And is it why I'm picking at my relationship? Yes. Is it why I'm doing these things? And I want everybody to learn from my hard lessons. Like even in my relationships, I've always been such an incredible partner. I will literally make you 10 times whatever you are when I found you. But what I realized even in my own relationship is my greatest lesson from my last relationship was when I felt when I felt like something was wrong in my relationship, I should have been asking myself what was wrong inside myself before ever going even near there. Yeah. I didn't realize how much self-work I wasn't doing and I was missing it. And so if I can help people not miss it, and that would be all the greatness that I could ever give. Because I spent the last three years after my recent breakup, which was one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life. And I only date great men. And I believe that when you're really in tune with yourself, you attract what you are, you attract what you tolerate in life. Again, like I'm I really don't believe in being a victim myself. I have complete ownership. Um, but the biggest lesson I learned was I wasn't taking care of myself. I was taking care of the relationship, I was taking care of him who was taking care of me. And that's your job. And it's such a big job. And if you do not do that self-work, you're gonna miss it. So for me, the past three years, I've been in therapy twice a month. I do EMDR therapy.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, amazing.
SPEAKER_01:I'm spent time with myself even when it was uncomfortable, and it's gonna be uncomfortable. You're gonna feel like you're going crazy. And that's the moment that you have to sit still and pick up the books, you know, pick up, and like I don't believe in overconsumption. You don't need to read, read, read until you're blue in the face, but you need to spend time getting to know yourself again. And I think that a lot of people don't realize you need to do it again and again and again. Like you're gonna need to re-check in with yourself, regroup forever. Yeah, allow yourself to find new interests, really find out what you're interested in. Like, I had a lot of interests my entire life. And now that I'm spending so much time with myself, I'm like, oh my God, you have even more. So, yeah, the self-care in a deeper way and the self-work in a deeper way is a lot of like the missing work that I feel like a lot of people are missing.
SPEAKER_00:So it's it's so much easier to blame your circumstances or to blame the people and the things that are going on physically around you than to actually look in the mirror and take ownership that what's going on inside of you is being reflected back to you in your physical life. And that's hard to do. That's hard to take ownership of your life. But as soon as you claim that ownership, there's this empowerment that comes from, oh shit. So you're telling me that everything going on outside of me is a reflection of what's going on on the inside of me. And that means that I'm the only one who has the power to change it.
SPEAKER_05:Literally.
SPEAKER_00:So you have you have the power. Yeah. No one else has the power. And um, you know how you're talking about in your relationship that you weren't talking, you know, taking care of yourself, you're taking care of him in the relationship. And that's often what a lot of times people do. Um, my husband and I, in our vows to each other when we got married, was I'll take care of me for you and you take care of you for me. And together we will reap the benefits of the fruits that we both create internally and on ourselves together. And I mean, that's huge. And in any relationship, not just, you know, a marriage, but like you have to do the work yourself. You can't expect for anybody else to pick up the pieces for you. So that's that's great that you're able to like realize that and that you're, you know, spending this time right now working on yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that a lot of times, like I said, I think people don't even know where to start or they find it so intimidating. But it is exactly what you said. If there's something happening in your outer life is be that you don't like, it's something because something in your inner world is not going good. And I've always had, like I said, my relationships were great. And you know what I mean? My past relationship was also great. But there was something missing in me. And that's when, like, just like you had a spiritual experience, it was for me when God was calling me home again. Like I've always had such strong faith, but I realized that I wasn't putting that at the forefront of everything. I was talking to God daily, I prayed daily. I, you know what I mean? I he was always a big part of my life. He was the center, but not the front. And so over the past three years, I think that that's been a really big journey for me, too, is like my spiritual journey. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that really does change your life when you put that first.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, definitely. Victimhood is really comfortable. Yeah, you know, so it's easy to get stuck in our stories. Yeah. So, what's the first step for you to empowerment?
SPEAKER_01:Um, honestly, the first step to empowerment for me is just really sitting down with yourself and knowing what you want. Like every year I check in with myself and my therapist, she was like, What do you want to accomplish by the time you're 40? And I was like, Ooh, that's a good one. I was like, as I'm sitting here and I'm 37, I think sitting down and asking yourself those hard questions, like, yeah, what is it that you want to do? And you know what I mean? And then taking the steps to doing it. Like, just for us, like writing our chapter. I am a writer. I've been a writer since I was a little girl. Like when they asked me what I wanted to be as a little girl in kindergarten, I wrote a writer.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:And I've been a published poet and I've written beauty articles and everything like that. But writing for yourself is so different. When we were asked to write our stories, I said, How do you talk about yourself?
SPEAKER_02:I was like, This is so crazy. I was like, it was hard for me. I don't know if it was hard for you.
SPEAKER_00:I love to journal. Yeah. So did you start a journaling practice to kind of help with that?
SPEAKER_01:I'm a journaler through and through. There's a book called The Artist's Way. I don't know if you've ever read it by Julia Cameron.
SPEAKER_00:No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm a journaler. I have been my entire life because I was raised by a writer. Right. But um, yeah, I've always journaled, but it was just so funny the act of talking about yourself for for me.
SPEAKER_00:Like, instead of just like pouring your heart out on the paper, actually being able to like articulate your story for it to have meaning for sure.
SPEAKER_01:But it's literally for me, I think the really the true question to the first step and empowerment is giving yourself the opportunity to actually go after what you dream.
SPEAKER_00:Give yourself permission.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think so often we're like, oh, I'm dreaming of this. Go after it and don't be afraid to fail. Like, I think the difference right now in writing this chapter, and what the biggest takeaway was for me, it was like, even if I face plant in the dirt, I'm gonna publish this. Yeah, I'm gonna do it because I'm gonna give myself to be the woman that I prayed to be, that I dreamed of being this entire time that that little girl wrote when she was young. I want to give her that opportunity. So I think like really just putting yourself in those places to be that woman that you want to be because you are her, or else you wouldn't have had that idea and inkling in the first place. Yeah. So you have to give yourself opportunities to become it.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely. So you knew you wanted to be a writer. Um, you mentioned before we started filming that your cousin gifted you with a coffee mug that said uh best author or what it's best-selling author. Best-selling author. Um, and now you are a best-selling author and you're in the process of writing your very first novel, like on your own, which is amazing. So um, you mentioned in the book that your uncle taught you the power of manifestation. So I'd like to know what is it to you and what isn't it? Because here you are writing when you're a little girl that you want to be an author. Your cousin gifts you five years ago this coffee mug that you drink out of every single morning that says best-selling author. Now you're a best-selling author working on your next book. So, what is manifestation to you? Like, did were you able to manifest that by focusing your attention on that through all these years and honoring that part of yourself? What is it and what isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, um, honestly, it's it's so funny, but I do believe in like you read these books about the law of attraction and the secret and all of these other books. And I listen a lot to Joe Dispenza and meditation, holding something in your mind and bringing it to fruition. As a little girl, I was taught this very young. My uncle is an incredible man. He's the man I've been talking about. He's gonna love this podcast. It's obviously a plug for him. Um he would always sit us down and tell us to write our goals on an index card. And for me, I think when you hold something or, and for me, what I've come to realize, what it truly is for me, is that God answers our prayers and he puts desires on our hearts for a reason. And if you stay in the energy of what you want and you don't let up throughout the years, I think I've one woman of extreme perseverance. Like I can believe in something for a very long time and work at something for a very long time without thinking, is this ever coming? I don't even, I don't even humor those ideas. I'm like, it's coming for a fact.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I know it because one, I know I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna work for it. And I'm gonna meet it in the middle. I always tell every single one of my friends, you have to get up and meet God in the field. You know, there's one thing to hold an idea, and then the second is to get up and work for it. So for me, manifestation is really concentrating on what you want, the visual exercises in the morning. Like every day I sit down, I read the Bible, and then I meditate and I hold what I want and I envision my dream life. Like even when I'm walking, I'll do visual walking manifestation, me walking into my dream life, me doing it. And then I put it into practice every single day. Like I write every single day, I journal in the artist way by Julia Cameron. You have to do it. You're going to, I just already know you're gonna be texting me and being like, Candace. I love this because you do three pages of unconscious writing every single morning. And you can do a little notebook, a big notebook, whatever, whatever you want. And so um, for me, it's just holding exactly what you want and having unwavering faith that it is gonna somehow be in your line of path. And you talk about it as if it's yours, you act about it as if it's yours, exactly, and you go about it. Like even in my young career as a makeup artist, I was a manager for Mac for eight years. And back in my 20s, being a freelance makeup artist was a literal dream. The only people that were freelance makeup artists were Gwen Stefani's makeup artist. This was not a thing that was a common job at the time, and it was such a big risk to do it. And so I woke up one day and I was like, I'm gonna quit my job. I just want to do makeup. I do not want to be a manager, I do not want to clock in anymore. I just want to work for myself. And so I woke up the next day and I quit my job. And then I was like, I'm gonna do everybody in anybody's makeup in Las Vegas. I'm not gonna even limit myself. So I started doing everybody in anybody's makeup. I was doing weddings, I was doing show girls, I was doing lawyers, I was doing everything. And then I said, you know what? I now I only want to do models and I want to work in LA and I want to do like pretty little things and fashion nova and I want to work for these brands. Two weeks later, pretty little things called and said, Can you do an ad for Coachella in the middle of the desert? And they hired me and my cousin. They didn't know we were cousins. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_03:And we're all like, we're not gonna tell them until we get there.
SPEAKER_01:But um, so I kept holding it because, like, every every time you get to a next place, you're gonna dream a new dream. And it allows you to dream a new dream and you're gonna have a new vision and a new thing. And so each time I held about it, I talked to my clients about it, I talked about to everybody. I'm like, you guys, I want to do this next. And I think it's holding that excitement and allowing yourself to be excited, yeah, and not weighed down by your doubts or your worries, but be excited about your future. Right so every time, like God kept opening those doors for me. So that's what manifestation is for me. And manifest what it's not for me is allowing yourself to doubt the things you dream of. And I think that that's a very hard thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, because we're all just humans. And at the end of the day, we have imposter syndrome. I suffer from imposter syndrome. We all do. I could do a good job, and then the next day I'm like, I'm nobody. Like, did I even do that? Or like, you guys, I'm crumbling, or you know what I mean? And so um, what's not is not allowing yourself to go back on the great things that you've done or who you know you could be. Yeah, no matter what. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That story is very similar to mine when I, you know, made the decision that I wanted to be a photographer. And I I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, so I didn't quit a nine to five, but I just was like grabbed a camera one day and I asked every single person I knew to model for me. And I, you know, started really working on my money mindset at the time. So I was like, I'm gonna make$120,000 in my first year of business. And I just radically, without a doubt in my mind, believed it. And I didn't let doubt and I didn't let those that imposter syndrome creep in. Like I just was like telling everybody I knew. I was writing it when I was coloring with my kids 120,000. I'm a wedding and an old man photographer. Like I just radically believed it. Yes. And I was able to do it. And um, you know, I love manifestation. I know it kind of has like a bad rap, but for me, it's I've proven to myself that it's real so many times in my life. Um, that when I put my point of attraction on something and I align myself, my emotions, my my focus energetically to get me to that goal, it comes. Yeah. And I've really, really, really been able to figure it out. There's like a secret recipe. And it's literally, you just have to put your point of attraction on it, align yourself energetically, and don't have a doubt in the world. Don't let that imposter syndrome creep in. Don't let intrusive thoughts keep you from believing that you're capable of doing great things. And you talked a lot about a visualization. Um, I've read a study that when you actually go through the process of visualizing something in your mind, that's why, you know, professional athletes will do visualizations of them scoring the winning touchdown, you know, on the field. And they actually visualize this and they do this with their coaches. And when I was, I trained, I was a yoga teacher at one point. There's a process called yoga nidra. And it's um where you actually, you know, get in a comfortable position, you lay down, and you are walked through a process of a visualization, if you will, like a visualization meditation. And the the brain and the body, like the brain doesn't know the difference between you actually physically going out and doing something or sitting down and visualizing it. Right. So it thinks it's happening in real life. So if you continue to focus your visualization and your point of attraction on what you want, it's gonna come to you because it doesn't register that it's not actually happening. Right. It thinks, okay, this is happening for us.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So you just have to get on board.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, everything is that rat like that radical faith. You know what I mean? That radical faith really does get you there. And we are very powerful and spiritual beings. You know what I mean? And we were created by a creator to create at the end of the day, you know what I mean? And so that all of it ties into one like the law of attraction, manifestation, the Bible. It all came from there. You know what it's mean? It's one giant book. But yeah, so I really, really do believe in that. And I practice the same things in my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, that's amazing. I'm so glad when you wrote about manifestation. I'm like, okay, she gets it. She gets it. So um at 15 with no safety net or backup plan, you heard a whisper in your heart, you were made for more. And this really spoke to me because I actually wrote the exact same thing in my chapter. No, you did not. I wrote the exact same thing. I went, I was reading it to Jonathan yesterday and I was like, look, she read that, like she wrote this, you were made for more. And then I flipped to my chapter and it was like, you were meant for more. And I was just like, I I had like a moment of, you know, that I woke up and I heard something and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, no, I'm I'm meant for more. I'm not settling for this life that I've designed anymore. Like I'm meant for big things. Yeah. So it really spoke to me. So talk to me about that little voice. Um, how has it shaped your decisions moving forward?
SPEAKER_01:You know, honestly, um, for me, that voice is God. And, you know, uh everybody can call it something different at the end of the day. But for me, um, it was God's voice, and it really did shape my life a lot because a lot of circumstances are gonna happen to a lot of us, a lot of things are gonna happen to a lot of us, but realizing that you don't need to be defined by the things that happen to you is a really big and prolific moment for us all.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, when you realize that life happens to everybody and there's constantly good and bad things happening all around us, um, and you just like we've been talking about, it's about like taking ownership, but realizing that we were all meant for more. Every single one of us, there's not a single person on this earth that was not meant for more. But for me personally, um the coming from the childhood I came from and the circumstances I came from, I was never enough for my biological parents. And I could have really felt that way and went to that narrative. Like they weren't interested in me, they didn't feel remorseful about anything at the time or what so it would have looked. And so um, I was always had a very close relationship, like I said, with God. And I had this moment when I was 16 where it was one of my defying moments. I didn't have anybody telling me to go to school, I didn't have anybody, and I actually found myself on my own at 15 and a half years old. I had left home and I never went back again. And I was like, I don't want to just like work in a restaurant or work in one of these things. And I could hear this voice just keep saying, You were meant for more. You were meant for more. And I was like, okay, I have a dream. And nobody was telling me I could be that, but this voice was telling me I could. And you know, like you can say it's your own voice, you can say it's anything, anybody can say something different, but for me it was God's voice. Yeah, and he was telling me I was meant for more. And he was right. And I'm really, really glad I listened because I had radical self-belief in myself every step of the way. And even when it seemed like it wasn't going to happen, it was like it was going to happen. Like I remember my uncle, I was working for Matt Cosmetics, and during Thanksgiving, it's Black Friday. So nobody wants that shift.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I worked in retail, I remember. Yeah, nobody wants to come in after having dinner, eating turkey. Everybody's tired, and everybody wants to be with their family. Yeah. Well, I didn't have that at that time, so I volunteered so that other people could be with their families. And you know, I did not have anybody celebrating Thanksgiving, and my uncle's buying a last minute gift for his wife. And he comes in and he goes, Candace, why are you here? And I said, Well, Uncle, where else did I have to be? And I was all like, and I have to work, like I have this dream, Uncle. Like, I'm a makeup artist today, I'm a manager of a counter. But in six years, you just wait. I'm gonna be an international makeup artist, uncle. And he went in his car and he cried. And he wrote about this in his book. But in six years, I was that eight years, I was that makeup artist. And so, you know, you really have to listen to that voice. That voice was right. I was meant for more. And now I've accomplished more than I ever thought I would. And it's telling me again, you were meant for more. So I can't believe that that is even a possibility for me. I wouldn't believe that this was a possibility that I would be a best-selling author, that I would be an international and celebrity makeup artist. If you had told me that as a little girl, like I wrote in my chapter chapter, I would have never believed you. And the fact that God wants even greater things for us than we want for ourselves. And it says it in the Bible. It's bigger than you imagined, it's more than you imagined, and it's better than you imagined. That's literally in the Bible. And it's so crazy, but I'm a living testimony that that's true.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I love that so much. Um, what kind of practices or habits do you implement into your life to strengthen that voice?
SPEAKER_01:Um, you know, I literally do read the Bible every morning. I'm very like regimented right now at this point. And I think that you need to be as you're an adult, you realize that discipline is truly love. Yeah, it's loving yourself and everything. Boundaries. Yeah. Saying no. Yeah. And so for me, um, every morning it's reading the Bible and doing what matters most to me, that spiritual practice and tuning into God's voice. So it's spending a lot of time by myself or creating those moments of stillness where I can hear it. So, like in the morning, there's no music on. It's just me. I make my cup of coffee in the morning, I read the Bible and I wait and I listen and open up that channel for God to communicate with me. And, you know, I book therapy twice a month, whether I'm good or bad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like now I realize like everything's self maintenance and it's so funny, but your therapist becomes like your best friend. Like she's just like, I was excited to hear from you. You did not like, I'm like waiting to hear what happened over the past two weeks. So from hearing me cry for the past two and a half years over heartbreak to now just being excited for like what I'm doing. I always make sure that I'm taking care of myself. Like You have to change the oil in your car. So why would we not be doing that for ourselves? So for me, um, it's definitely doing therapy. I do EDMR now or EMDR every once in a while just to make sure that I'm fine-tuning and still working on myself and realizing, is there anything coming up for me? Um, I read a lot of self-development books, probably just once a month, so that I'm staying on top and just really like learning and challenging myself to new things, listening to podcasts and stuff like that. And also like really like working out and taking care of myself, like making sure I'm eating very healthy, like I'm very all organic and like making sure I'm watching what's putting inside my body and then taking care of my body. And then just doing the things, like self-practice, like that I think really helps me is doing the things I want to do. Like, if I want to travel to a city, I'm gonna book the ticket. That's taking care of yourself too. I feel like a lot of people don't realize like traveling and going to different countries and seeing different things, it helps you get a different view on life. And so I think that that's like how I practice self-care as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's huge. I mean, learning to strengthen that voice really comes back again to just doing the inner work and checking in with yourself and addressing things. And I love that you said you will, you know, dive into podcasts and audiobooks, but you have to keep doing that, right? You have to revisit it once a month or, you know, once every other month. Cause, you know, in the beginning, when you first go into this spiritual awakening or personal development world, you're like consuming everything, right? You're a sponge, you're like, oh, like this is amazing. I love this, I love this. And then you stop listening to the podcast. You stop listening to the audiobooks. And I know that I've gone through phases of this in my life. And all of a sudden, I'll start to feel not so good in my body anymore. And my mindset will start to get a little want, it's wandering off back into old patterns. And I'm starting to feel like defeated. And I'm like, I'm like, what's going on? It's like, oh, I'm not actually listening to anything that's reminding me of these new truths that I've built for myself. I have to constantly check back in with myself and fill the oil on the car, right? Like take the time to work on myself. So once a month or, you know, once every week, listening to something that's gonna remind you of like, oh my gosh, I'm of a creator. Like I'm I'm here to live the best of my potential. Like I am meant for more. And you have to keep checking in on yourself because you can't just do all the work and then expect to just live this purpose-driven life forever. You have to constantly be working on yourself. It's a never-ending journey. We're always a student forever.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it's the truth though, when you don't use it, you lose it. Okay. Right. And so it's just like our brain is a supercomputer. You have to program that computer every single day. And so, like, you know what I mean? I think that there can be like an overconsumption. And how I listen to the voice too is by controlling what I'm listening to. You know, I don't over-consume and I leave a lot of room to hear that voice in my life. Yeah. But I also do like Atomic Habits is one of my favorite books by James Clear. And he says, you do not rise to the level of your habits, but you fall to the level of your system. Your systems. So I take that and I apply that to every area of my life. He didn't just mean in entrepreneurship or in the business world, because this is a man that talks to huge companies, football teams, baseball teams, like all the things that you can think of, but you do not rise to the level of your habits, you fall to the levels of your systems. And so for me, I take that and I apply that to my life. Like, that's why I make sure like I have a system. I wake up. I the first thing that I allow to go in my brain is God's word. I remind him who I am in God. And I no longer allow myself to tell myself who I am. I don't allow my self-doubts to creep in. I prime my mind on that first. I put healthy food in my body. I put a healthy podcast on. I go for a run. So I'm programming myself every single day because you will forget. I've read so many books, and then I'll be like, wait, oh wait, I have to reread that. So I read Atomic Habits once a year.
SPEAKER_04:That's great.
SPEAKER_01:And it's a five-hour audible. And you know, your brain, whether you're doing audibles or you're physically reading, your brain doesn't know the difference. It retains the information just the same. So I'm telling everybody, I have a list of five-hour audible books that people should read. I'm like, this takes five seconds. You have got to read it. Like you're not sure. You know what I mean? Because we're priming ourselves and how much we reiterate that we're programming our system. And the more that we read it and the more that we train ourselves that the more it's gonna naturally become our second nature and we're gonna find ourselves drifting less and less. Yes. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It sounds like you have a pretty like locked-in morning routine. Cause like based off what you're telling me. And I know that, you know, some of the most successful people in the world talk about how their morning routine is non-negotiable. This is what I wake up and I do X, Y, Z. And I liked that you use the words like we're reprogramming ourselves. Yeah. So it sounds like every morning you're waking up and you're setting your intentions for the day. You're you're remembering who you are and what you came here to do and how you're gonna show up in the world and how you're gonna impact people. And that's so awesome. Like that's so fantastic that you have that on lock. Like it seems like it's playing out in your life and all the beautiful things that you're able to do. So thank you for sharing that with us.
SPEAKER_01:Of course. Like, you know, at the end of the day, we're all human and life affects us all just the same. And especially with everything that's going on in our world today, it's so easy to just get distracted by all of it. Yep. And we have to show up as our best selves so that we can make the impact in the world that we want to make or create the world that we want to see.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So I think that that's kind of how I set myself up and I realize like it's very big, like being disciplined and having that morning routine is just very big for me. And it has absolutely changed my life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I like that you dived into like the exact tools and like kind of how you go about your morning routine. And whether you do it in the morning or you do it in the afternoon, you do it at night, just having some type of regimen of like this is how I get my mind and my energy in the right place so that I can have the best me come out in all aspects of my life.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Um doing it scared and doing it anyways. I wanted to talk about that a little bit. You've you kind of have said that a few times, but when you left your nine to five and jumped into being a freelance makeup artist, um, how did you like rewrite the story in your head to not feel disempowered and to just have radical faith within yourself?
SPEAKER_01:Honestly, I think that I just had it. But let me tell you, I could have been so terrified. And I was at that time, I was married and I was predominantly making a lot of money at that moment. Mac was a very, very good job. And it had this great security. And especially for somebody like me that didn't have the same opportunities or come from stability necessarily, that was the most stable job I had ever known at the time. And it was a good one. But I felt this longing in my heart, this unsatisfaction, as if is this all that I'll ever be? Is this all that I'll ever do? And am I gonna die with this dream that I could be a freelance makeup artist inside of me? And at the time, my only parent had just gotten sick. And she had told me, I believe it's time. And I said, Okay. I had always told her to tell me when it was time to take care of her. And that's what it meant, that she could no longer do it by herself. And so she called me one day and she said, Candace, it's time. And I said, Okay. And my ex-husband was a wonderful man, and he said, Let's move in with her, let's take care of her, let's move out our entire house to make her comfortable because she has all the things shed up there. And so I was still married to an incredible man. And I was like, Okay, but I'm also gonna quit my job. And he's like, What? And I was like, I was like, I'm getting so much work and I do not know if it's gonna be consistent, but I'm getting requested so much to do all these freelancing jobs, and this is what I want to do. Like, I want to do this. And and I luckily I had incredible support, and he was like, you know what? If you say you're gonna do it, I trust you. You have done everything you said you were gonna do up until this point. And so I trust you. And so I woke up that next day, I quit my job, and I just like had this radical faith that it was going to work out. I honestly was petrified. I was terrified. And but I told myself that just like you in the beginning, I said, I will do anybody and everybody to make this happen. Like, I will do everyone's makeup in this city to make this dream happen. I didn't have a portfolio at the time, which everybody was asking for. And I was like a portfolio. So I started asking every pretty girl I ever knew to do her makeup. I was all like, Can I do your makeup? Oh, you're gorgeous. I jumped in every single person's DM. So I started creating and magnetizing that life I wanted for myself. Yeah. I was going out in the field and I was getting it. I was determined. I was like, I don't even care if I need to go door to door and drop off business cards to tell everybody that I'm a makeup artist. But it's so, I think that my willingness to do that opened up the doors to where I didn't even have to. Yeah. I think that that willingness, when you're willing to do whatever you want or you take to like live your dream, I think all of a sudden the world will open up to you. And it says she wants that. She's willing to do the work. And then opportunity. And I also treated every single job as if it was my business card.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I showed up early, I came on time, I over try to over-deliver everywhere I'm at. Yep. I try to give the most value. Like I'm leaving you with a list to of makeup to buy, I'm leaving you with your little sponge. I like you know, everything to do. So um, all of that really like led me to living out that dream.
SPEAKER_00:So I love that you said that the doors open for you because you had the willingness, not even that you needed to go out and do it, but because in your heart and you communicated that like energetically with God, with the universe, the creator of all that is, you put yourself in alignment of like, I am doing this and it's gonna happen for me, and I will do whatever it takes. And then before you had to go door to door, doors just started opening for you. And that's how it works. Yeah. That's how it works.
SPEAKER_01:It truly is. Like, honestly, like I said, like I'm a very obviously a very big faith-based person. So that is how God works, you know, and it's definitely how he worked in my life. Like, I would have conversations with him, and the next day the door would be opened. It was almost instantaneous. So it was really, really cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And faith requires resilience. Showing up and continuing to have that faith. Physically, you're gonna be resilient to all the things that are gonna come your way and you're gonna just do the best you can because you know it's gonna happen for you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I mean, it really does. It gives you a strength that you can't explain. Absolutely. You know what I mean? We're exhausted, we're tired, it takes work, but the next day you're waking up, you're invigorated, especially when you're chasing after something that you really believe in or that is your dream. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about resilience. Like, what does resilience mean for you? Like just in general, like how you approach life. Like, because for me, when you say faith through fire, um, resilience is something that I feel like you have to continue to actually exude because life happens to you. We're human, life happens to you. So, how do you stay resilient and aligned in your faith?
SPEAKER_01:Honestly, um it's having that extreme faith that keeps me resilient. Like I think you have to truly find something that you believe in. And for me, it's God. And so no matter what happens in life, I know what happens in the end. I I know I know what happens. I know that the author of the story. And so for me, I not only trust myself, like it's become my framework of my mind. Like in my framework, God works out all things for our good. He didn't say some, he didn't say maybe. He said, I work out all things for the good of those that love me. And so that has become my eternal framework since I was a little girl. I was raised really faith-based, and I don't I didn't believe in organized religion or anything like that. And I went through my spiritual time and I went through all of it just like everybody else. I am an innately curious woman and I'm an avid learner. So, like I will go out there and study every religion in the book. When I was 16, I went to a temple, I went to a mass, I went to every single thing because I was innately curious. And at the end of the day, for me, being resilient just really means having unwavering faith in the things that you believe in. Find out like what you stand for, find out who you are. For me, I'm an integrity-based, like driven woman. And for me, like um, I really believe in love and being a better person, being a kind person, being an honest person and doing everything with integrity, doing everything with heart. And so um I've been resilient because of those things, because my framework and my foundation is God. I'm just absolutely positive that He's going to work it out. And I've had the most extreme I lost my only parent. I went through a divorce, I've had heartbreak, I've had loss. When you see somebody that you love pass away, I think it's one of the hardest things in the entire world. But um life always does have a way of surprising you. You do make it through to the other side. And I think it's so important for people to know that and just to have it like who you are during trials, I think is really who you are. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean. And so even for ourselves, I remember times when circumstances are happening, and when you're younger, you're thrown off by them so much. You're like, oh my God, this is my world is crumbling. Yeah. And then as you get older, the more in tune you are with yourself and God or your whatever source you believe in, I think you become a little bit more calmer when life is thrown at you. Yeah. And you know what I mean? You become a little bit more resilient in time.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I like that you said that you explored, you know, being an innately curious woman, that you explored all these different religions or, you know, spirituality or all of these different things, and you found what works for you. I think that's so powerful for people because I'm a huge believer in find what works for you. And that might mean trying on a couple of different things to find what actually empowers you and makes you feel good in your body. And my belief system is more that, you know, there is one creator and it goes by many names. Yeah. That is my belief system. Yeah. But that doesn't work for everybody. And the I empower people to go out there and find what do you believe?
SPEAKER_01:Try on some different hats. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think if you never question anything, you're just adopting everybody else's beliefs.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know what I mean? I think that I am such a lover of people that I don't really care what you believe in or what you do. Everybody's accepted in my house. Yes. And you know what I mean? I have my strong beliefs and I'll always be ready to tell anybody about them, but I'm willing to accept everybody at my table. Like everybody has a seat at my table. And I think, yeah, it is very important to not just adopt the things that you've been taught to believe your entire life or from society. We will collect the things from our friends, families, and then we create our own little idea. Yeah. So I think in life, it's so important to explore everything constantly. Yeah. Ask yourself Am I wrong about this? Am I right about this? Why do I believe in it so much? I think it's so important to have that internal dialogue. And again, like I said, spend time with yourself. You're the person you're gonna live with the longest. And your opinion and knowing who you really are is one of the most important like life's work that you'll ever do in your life. So I think that that's how I see that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Having strong convictions loosely held, like being able to be wrong, you know, I think that's so powerful and that shows true wisdom is, you know, you might have this belief system based on your experience of life and the things that you've learned and you know, the the things that you've read, right? You have a belief system. But if somebody comes and presents you new information and you're all of a sudden like, oh, that actually makes sense. That actually works. Like being willing to change what you think about it because you don't like you can hold on to an idea, but you can also be open to other ideas too. And I think that that is something that we lack a lot in this world at this point in time. People are very, very attached to their ideas and they're not open to being wrong. We have a really hard time saying when we're wrong because we attach our ego to our ideas and our belief systems.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I think people are adopting it as their identity now. Yes. And you know what I mean? I think that you have to have extreme humility in life. None of us know if we're right.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Right. I think like it's so funny because I study theology, and a lot of people think that the Bible is about just good and bad. It's actually about hypocrites inside of the church. Okay. Absolutely. What God was looking for from the Pharisees and religious leaders, because the Bible is sealed, like Revelation is a prophecy chapter. So we're in a sealed time. I think that a lot of people, he was looking for them to say, I don't know. But they were saying, Nope, I know this, I know that. And a lot of people are thinking that they know everything. But I like to say, this is my viewpoint, but I don't know. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Just so everybody knows, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:But is that not a true test to wisdom?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Being able to say that, like, I don't know. Yeah. And I think like a true test to wisdom also is saying, you know what? I respect you for what you believe. I respect me for what you believe. And it doesn't make you a bad person that your beliefs are different than mine. I never label anyone. And like it truly takes me a lot for me to ever think, like, oh, you're a bad person. I don't even have that in my head. I don't even operate that way at all. I'm just like, oh my God, I appreciate how different you are. It challenges me to think about the way that I am. Yes. Like, I take a true appreciation for people opposing my beliefs or my ideas because I was like, sweetie, I'm flu, I'm ready to change. Like, I'm sleeping. You show me that I'm wrong, honey. I'm jumping on board. I'm wrong. Let me get off this train real quick. Like, you know what I mean? So I think like in today's society, but even as a person, when you're willing to change, you're growing because change is uncomfortable. It challenges you on every single level level. And I think everything that we talked about today, at the end of the day, change is really, really hard. And embracing life and getting to where we all want to be in life, which is this healthy, happy place where we can invite goodness in again, where we can focus on the good instead of everything else. It's it's all one thing spending time with yourself to get to know who you are so that you can be more receptive to the life happening around you, so that you can let good happen to you again after trauma, after heartbreak, after disappointment, so that you know that life is good. Life is good. And if you focus on the bad, it only gets worse. But when you focus on the good, it only gets better. And if you put down your phone or put an unplug for a moment and you go outside and take a walk with your husband and kids, or you go do pottery with your friends, you'll realize that that's the reason we're all working so hard. Yes, is to have that life, to not only have a fulfilling career and something you can wake up and be excited to do every single day, but also excited to come home, excited to play, excited to see who you're gonna be next. Because that person's gonna change. I'm not the same person I was two years ago, and I'm not gonna be the same person in two years that I am today. Amazing. But I'm excited to meet her.
SPEAKER_00:You know, God, I could talk to you for hours. There's still so much to dive into, but we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up here in a minute. I wanted to talk about um your quote. You I had asked you what like two of your favorite quotes that you might live your life by. And you said, Socrates and I search for myself to only find God. And I search for God only to find myself by Rumi. Yes. Talk to me about that.
SPEAKER_01:Um I mean, Socrates, I was a major philosopher when I was young.
SPEAKER_03:I literally thought I was gonna be one of the great. I don't know who I thought I was when I was young. I was a born an old soul. I loved her. I literally was all like Aristotle, Socrates.
SPEAKER_01:My grandma was like, what is wrong with this child? And so um, the unexamined life is not worth living by Socrates has always been one of my favorite quotes. Yes. He's also one of my favorite philosophers because he believed that none of us could be our greatest unless we were all at our highest potential.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that that is like one of my favorite mottos to live by. And I believe, like, unless you're your greatest, I'll never know my full potential of greatness. So we have to rise each other up as a society. So that's like, and the unexamined life is not worth living, and that's obviously what we've talked about. And then Rumi's like, I searched for myself to only find God. I searched for God to only find myself, is one of the truest quotes, I think, in the world for me. Um you know, like at the end of the day, if you find your creator, you're gonna learn more about yourself. If you find yourself, you're gonna learn more about your creator. Because I I do believe that we were created by God and He tells us stuff about Himself from the Bible. He first created heaven and earth. He created, and that's why we're so creative. And you know, um, it's also like the foundations I live myself by, like being loving, love thy neighbor, we're made of love, all of those things. So um it's one of my favorite quotes because I believe if you go either way, you're gonna find either one.
SPEAKER_00:I like that. Yeah, those are two really great ones. Yeah. Um, so to the listener who out there is maybe having a hard time trusting their gut or listening to their intuition, what would you tell them?
SPEAKER_01:Um, you're not your feelings.
SPEAKER_04:So good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you're not your feelings. And I used to be so controlled by my feelings. I think we all were. Oh, yeah. It was always like, I feel this, I feel that. You are not your feelings. Your feelings change like the wind. Okay. And eventually, even if they stay there for a long time, you are not them. You are exactly who you think you are. And if you tap in and you focus on the woman or the man or the person that you want to be, and you write a list of all those qualities that that person has, go out and become them. So you are exactly who you dreamed that you are inside. You wouldn't have been given that if it wasn't who you truly are. So just rise to the occasion.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Thank you for giving everybody permission. I think being able to give ourselves permission to dream big and to chase after what we once imagined ourselves to be as like a young woman or a young man, like giving them the permission. Like you, you can and you will.
SPEAKER_01:You will, no matter what happened to you, no matter where you came from. I will always say this too is there's a book called The Body Keeps the Score.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that book. Yeah. I read that when I was going through my um yoga, my trauma yoga therapy course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it talks about why we let the worst moments of our lives define the rest of them. Don't let them. Right. Don't let them take even more from you. Don't let those worst moments find it and allow that to be your testimony of for others of how you rose in spite of them. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And understanding that forgiveness isn't for them, it's for you. Yeah. Because you holding on to resentment and anger in your body towards a situation in your life that happened to you, it's not hurting them.
SPEAKER_01:No. It's hurting you. Yeah, and their journey is theirs too. Right. Those are things that they're gonna have to answer for. Right. And they're gonna live with you deserve freedom from it. Absolutely. You know, you deserve freedom, and forgiveness is for you and everything that you touch thereafter.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so another thing that I wanted to ask you was if you could go back and give your teenage self, like young women, like things in the 15 to like 22 era, a big hug and whisper something in her ear, what would you tell her?
SPEAKER_01:Dream even bigger. Yeah. I think that I would tell her to dream even bigger because I think that those dreams were so big for that little girl who came from nothing. And she deserved even more than that.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so excited to see what you're gonna do in life, and I'm honored to know you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thank you. I'm so equally as excited to see what you're gonna do in life, and I'm more honored to know you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm so happy. We're gonna wrap it up here. This has been honestly such a wonderful experience chatting with you today, Candice. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for having me. Um, I wanted to um mention that you can find Candace on Instagram and TikTok at Candace Del Doc Delgado. That'll all be in the show notes. Um, and then you can, if you're a makeup artist, you can join her makeup your mindset community. And you can buy the book that we both co-authored together, Slaying Vegas at Amazon, Barnes Noble, and Walmart. Did you know it's at Walmart?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, I think it's like at like a hundred different stories series. Yes, yes. There's like a large list where you can get the book now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, grab the book. And then um again, Candace is authoring another book. Yes. So keep an eye out for that and follow her on all socials so that you know when it launches and you can support her in all of her beautiful journeys. But thank you again so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, McKenna. I had such a great time.
SPEAKER_00:All right, guys. Bye. Bye.