Post by @vitasidorkina

👇🏻You know the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? Looking back now, I feel like my story is exactly that. So many of the experiences that challenged me throughout my modeling career have now become my greatest strengths. •First, being told “no” on castings multiple times a day- and not because someone rejected your work or your project, but because they rejected YOU , can either build you or break you. You may be surprised by how many models are deeply insecure. But if you learn how to redirect that rejection, guard yourself from it, and stop taking every “no” personally, it teaches you one of the greatest skills in life: how to keep going in the direction you want, even when other people don’t choose you. •Something else many people don’t know is that very few models actually make money. For many years, you can work almost for free while people take advantage of your hope that the next job will be “the one.” But that taught me delayed gratification, which has been so valuable throughout my entrepreneurial journey. When you build a business, you don’t always see an immediate return. It was the same with content- I worked for free for almost five years because I believed in my vision before anyone else did. •Modeling also attracts many difficult personalities. It taught me some painful lessons about trust, but it also made me very good at reading people, navigating different personalities, and trusting my intuition. Those social skills are now incredibly useful in business. •A lot of people imagine that models are treated glamorously on set, especially before social media exposed more of what actually happens behind the scenes. But models have often been treated poorly. Some days we weren’t even served lunch. Other days, we were expected to pose in bikinis in freezing temperatures. As unfair as some of those experiences were, they taught me to show up, stay professional, and do my job through both the good and the bad. They gave me the work ethic I have today. •And yes , the industry created a very unhealthy relationship between me and my body. It put me under an enormous amount of pressure. But after coming through the other side, I now understand how important it is to take care of yourself, put yourself first, and recognize how an unbalanced diet and a lack of self-care can affect your mental health. I’m not grateful for the toxicity itself. I’m grateful that I found a way to turn those experiences into resilience, discipline, intuition, and strength. Sometimes your biggest blessing doesn’t look like one while you’re living through it ❤️