I attended Hoda Kotb’s sold-out Joy 101 retreat. The three words I'll cling to - USA Today

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — “How hard is it to find joy at an oceanside Ritz-Carlton?” you might snark.

Before things kick off at Joy 101’s Fall Retreat – put on by Hoda Kotb’s wellness company – I make an impromptu trip to the beach. With Reebok sneakers in hand, I stroll along the shore, finding delight in skimming the Atlantic Ocean’s fluffy sea froth and being reminded by the compressing sand of my presence, my body – flesh and bone – that I am more than my incessant anxieties on overdrive ruminating over a new health concern that resulted in stress-induced vertigo.

Aside from that, it’s been more than a year of enduring amped up anxiety – in which I’ve worked through driving over bridges and am working on getting back to being at ease on airplanes. Thanks to Diazepam (generic Valium), I have arrived in Florida and am enjoying the warmth of the sun and the hem of my long dress getting caught by a wave.

But of course, like the tides change, so do emotions. As part of the weekend’s open, on Friday, Sept. 25, mind coach Manjit Devgun asks attendees in a ballroom to imagine that they’re wearing a crown: “Be in this regal posture and claim yourself as the queen or even the king that you are.”

“What business do I have wearing a crown?” my inner critic objects immediately. With doubts of my abilities to adapt to life changes, paired with a nearly non-existent social life, and uncertainty of how to contribute meaningfully to the world in a way that my faith inspires me to, I struggle to understand my worth. Later Friday night, I read an email from a literary agent, whom I’d been working on a book proposal with for months. He informs me that he doesn’t think the book is sellable, further confirming in my mind the notion that I am a failure.

The sting of the rejection, amid the other things I’m going through, runs deep. But I’m thankful that the weekend retreat provides opportunities to reframe these feelings of not being enough. Model Molly Sims, who also founded YISE Beauty, says she sees setbacks as a plus when hiring.

“I love when people have failed,” she says in a conversation with Kotb. “Because you learn a lot from failing. You learn a lot from when things don't work out.”

Sims also recounts her numerous rejections to the crowd: “I have been told more no's. ‘Oh, God, you can't model.’ ‘Oh, gosh, you're never going to be a host. What are you talking about?’ ‘Oh, you're not going to be an actress.’ ‘Oh my God, you're going to start having kids at 39?'"

For the record, Sims accomplished all of these things and welcomed her third child with husband Scott Stuber at the age of 43.

“I'm like a cat that just doesn't die,” Sims, 53, tells the crowd. “I will pivot, and I will pivot, and I will pivot again.”

Chatting with Sims backstage, I suddenly feel like the star of one of those movies in which a flawless mannequin comes to life. Below her stunning exterior, is someone who also doesn’t have it all figured out, and, despite being fueled by rejection, she’s not immune to it.

“Those moments, they are hard, they are real,” she says. “I cried myself to sleep many nights. I've had panic attacks. Oh, my God, it's like, ‘What am I going to do?’ And then you just start to break it down and plan."

Later in our conversation come the three little words that put a black-and-white thinker at ease, that make me realize the difference between myself and someone like Sims isn’t that she’s completely confident or equipped with every answer to every possible question or obstacle. She doesn’t let the “I don’t know” paralyze her.

“I don't know what I'm doing,” Sims says. “Every day I don't know what I'm doing. Some things are going to work, and some things aren't. You hope it; you want it to. Sometimes it doesn't, and you learn from it, and then you move on, and then you move on, and then you move on again.”

Kotb, 62, is another example of someone who faces uncertainty and still moves forward.

“I'm learning how to run a business,” she tells me of Joy 101, launched in May 2025. “I don't know how to do it, and I'm learning. I'm a student all over, so I'm reminding myself that because I was good at one thing, at the ‘Today’ show, doesn't mean I'm good at this yet. As I tell my kids, ‘Yet.’”

My confidence is reborn with every instance of hearing “I don’t know.” And it reminds me of how Octavia Spencer revealed to me this summer that she's “always not comfortable at the beginning” of a new project.

“It's really important to say things like that,” Spencer’s “Ride or Die” costar Hannah Waddingham emphasized at her side. “You're listening to an Oscar winner talking, saying that she's never comfortable in any job. That's so great to be that transparent and go, ‘I haven't got all my s--- together.’ Neither have I."

Nearly a year ago, I sat in the audience of Reese Witherspoon’s Shine Away conference on the Universal Studios Lot, listening as she told the audience about pitching Hello Sunshine.

“When I got AT&T to give me money to start this company,” Witherspoon said, “I did not know what I was doing. I sat in a room full of men and I was like, ‘Nope. I know what I'm doing, and you are going to give millions of dollars! And it’s going to be great for you!'"

“And then I walked out of the room and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I’m doing,’” the “Morning Show” star added. “I didn't have a CEO! I didn't have anything … I just had an acting career, a passion for books, and I was like, ‘But I will figure it out.’”

“I don’t know” certainly isn’t a green light in every instance. But in my own personal life, I no longer wish to let it perpetually be a red one.