Proof that success is NOT a straight line!
Day 7 - and I almost missed writing this one!
Thank you, Janice, for the unwitting reminder that I was almost overdue - ARGH! - to get out a blog post for my challenge today!
I want to tell all of you about yesterday when I opted to get the hell out of the house and attend a free co-working event that I “coincidentally” learned of the day before, and which has apparently been happening the first Friday of every month for a while at a place I love to go and where I’ve taught a couple of workshops and trainings: Aviatra Accelerators.
It’s a place supporting and training women entrepreneurs.
So I went. And the first thing I decided - well, it was more of a realization, actually - was that I just couldn’t do the boring-ass contract work. BLECH! I said to myself, “Nope. I just don’t have the energy toward it; it’s dead energy, and next week I’ll go into the office every day just so that I’m not sitting in my apartment. I need PEOPLE!”
So that’s what I’ll do. And I sacrificed 4 hours of pay because fuckit.
Meanwhile, I ran into a young woman I met a few years ago named Sammie, who is absolutely lovely and is starting a business supporting neurodiversity needs. I love seeing people I know, and getting hugs. One of the major downfalls of being single is NOT ENOUGH DAMN HUGS!
The next thing that happened was that there was a chair masseuse there, and we all got free massages!
Think THAT’S a small thing?????? No, mama! That was EPIC! And she was fabulous! And here’s another one of those success-doesn’t-go-in-a-straight-line things:
She works blocks away from where I’m working these days. Think I’m going to take advantage of that once a month? You BETCHA!
SUCCESS #1! Ding!
Next came the 12PM presentation by a lovely Black couple - a man who’d been in the Marines for 37 years and he and his wife have started a business creating homemade, handmade, vegan, insanely good sherbet. When I get a really juicy corporate speaking event, I want to partner with them and bring them in to do the sherbet.
Eating insanely good - and fun - stuff:
SUCCESS #2
NEXT, I was sitting back around a table with about 4 or 5 other fabulous women, and Jill, the Executive President of Aviatra who is an amazing and dedicated woman, came to talk with me and I told her about my July 2nd workshop that I’m launching, called Can You See Me Now? She offered to put into the Aviatra newsletter, because that’s how she is. Lovely!
DING!
Check it out! July 2nd, 6:30pm-8:00pm EST - our personal Independence Day before the nation’s weird-this-year Independence Day…
I am, by the way, going to change this image - I need black women and Indian women and all the rest of it, but I was trying to get this loaded up quickly. Anyway, to learn more, click on the picture.
https://bit.ly/canyouseemenow90min
SUCCESS #3 - ding!
I asked Jill if she knew of any companies looking for speakers and she said, “I’m giving a talk at a place next week, and I would be happy to give them your one-sheet. Do you have one?” I was sooooooo happy to be able to say, “Yes I do!” with all of the confidence in the world as if it was a no-brainer!
I only created that danged thing 2 or 3 weeks ago! Score!
SUCCESS #4 - DING!
NEXT, Success #5 turned out to be the biggie! I went to talk to the sherbet wife. She had really moved me when she spoke about her son who when he was 18 went into the military, and she got all teary-eyed talking about how they need to support kids in the military - and showed photos of how they had done just that with their incredible sherbet - and how it had been so hard to see her son off to the service where she couldn’t just check on him every day and protect him.
So I went up to her afterward and hugged her and said how much I appreciated her open emotion - because I so do - and we got to chatting. I told her what I do and I told her I will plan on making her and her husband’s work part of the next event I do that would work for them. And she told me there is a place called We Bank that was started by women, and serves women, and she said they could probably use a lot of training in doing their presentations of their budding companies (they apparently serve women entrepreneurs as well), and she promised to connect me with two of the leaders of the thing…
…and this morning (Saturday), she did just that on LinkedIn!
SUCCESS #5 - DINGDINGDING!
So can I tell you something?
It is one of the truths of starting a company that you cannot start your definition of success with the letter “m”, as in money. That is not where the success starts, I don’t care HOW many men tell you it is. Because that’s not where the damn thing starts! It just isn’t!
I’m sick of the stories that say, “I was broke, and then I was a millionaire in 12 months” - a story, by the way, that I literally heard another version of just today and it made me turn off the damn zoom - and I’m sick of these masculine-goal-and-One-and-Only-Answer stories - because they diminish the majesty and the magic and mystery of what makes success what it is: harnessing and embodying the emotional and energetic connection with the spirit that is who we are.
I could easily go on a rant here, but I’ll save it for another time.
Mostly, I want to tell you that as far as I’m concerned success is in the steps forward. It is in the ability to appreciate and exercise the active faith in oneself that is based on those seemingly small steps forward that are in fact the filling in of what used to be the blanks in my very being - the blanks that had no faith in myself, no liking of myself, no sense of there being any there there!
This is hard work. No lie! by the middle of the afternoon today, I felt myself falling into a small funk because it’s TOUGH to wait for the big rewards! It is! So I let myself spend hours and hours watching Whitechapel on BritBox.com instead of doing any work whatsoever. Good call, Lori!
It’s tough to feel the forward movement, and then suddenly…not. The falling back into the emotional backslide. But I’ll tell you what’s different than it was in years past. I spent time in my car talking myself into a better feeling place, and when that didn’t go far enough. I called my friend Theresa, and that helped. And then I came home and ate an entire thing of ice cream. And watched Whitechapel. And I spoke to a friend I’ll see tomorrow at 1PM to have some relief from loneliness and a lot of fun painting rocks.
That may not thrill you, but it’s a small piece of heaven for me.
And rising into “I’m okay!” is a major success when you’ve spent decades in a funk depression that you never thought you could truly transform.
And I can.
And I have.
And paying attention to how I feel instead of the “shoulds” and “ought to’s” - even around “doing enough” for my business - is what brought me all kinds of forward movement yesterday.
Co count me in from now on. Putting my emotional wellbeing first in an uplift kind of way, and watching what happens, this is the way forward. This is not what they teach you in business school. Which is why it’s special. And it’s feminine. And … what more can I say? How about: So there!
