Letting Go Takes Love
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In the past 24 hours it feels as though I have awakened from a 35 year coma. I can’t begin to explain everything here, at least not yet.
But new realities have come into my field of vision, and I’m seeing the world through somewhat different eyes.
As moms, we often think that we are doing so much for everyone else, and we don’t have a voice of our own. Sometimes we feel squelched.
Today, I realized I’ve been squelching myself in ways I never recognized; ways I never comprehended.
And it changes starting now.
During this process of “awakening” if you will, I heard a quote on the radio. It moved me so, that I had to find the author and share it with you.
In the past few days, it hit me that as long as our hands are clenched, we cannot give, nor can we receive. Further, if all we do is take, eventually there’s nothing left to take. If all we do is give, eventually, there’s nothing left to give. Thus, we must give and take in order to keep balance and maintain a “karmic equilibrium” so to speak.
This passage from Dr. Margaret Rinck spoke to me. And so I offer it to those of you dealing with clenched fists – whether they’re yours or someone else’s:
To Let Go Takes Love by Dr. Margaret J. Rinck
To “let go” does not mean to stop caring. It means I can’t do it for someone else.
To “let go” is not to cut myself off. It’s the realization that I can’t control another.
To “let go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another. It’s to make the most of myself.
To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.
To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To “let go” is not to be in the middle, arraging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To “let go” is not to be protective; it’s to permit another to face reality.
To “let go” is not deny, but to accept.
To “let go” is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To “let go” is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
To “let go” is to fear less and to love more.
Don’t Have a “Fallback Plan”
My mom, as much as she had my best interests at heart, did me a huge disservice. Chances are good your folks did too.
At least, if you’re an entrepreneur like me, you might believe as I do that the phrase “fallback plan” is the most life-usurping ill-advised phrase our loved ones could ever offer.
As a child, my vision was to become a rock star. I had Mozart-like tendencies as a kid, composing music before I stared Kindergarten. And no, not “Mary Had A Little Lamb” kinds of things. I had compiled an entire album of music in a variety of genres by the time I was in grade school. Talent shows were my platform to share my prowess, and I was even party to an all-girl group a few of us founded in 6th grade that performed an original pop-style tune at our talent show.
We rocked the house. It helped that the house was packed with family, but we all had vocal ability, and being in the gifted program, none of us were dumb as a box of rocks.
By Junior High, I had compiled and submitted to the U.S. copyright office my first collection of compositions. I was looking for music composition or music business programs at my universities of choice, and was taking every opportunity to hone my craft. The singer-songwriter route to stardom ain’t an easy one, and I figured I needed to get started ASAP if I was going to “make it big” some day.
I graduated high school with a couple of fly by night record deals – but it was enough to impress my friends and leave me feeling like I was really going to be somebody. As I prepared for college, and focused in on a music composition degree, my mother “gently coerced” me into considering a degree in music education.
“That way, you’ll have a fall back plan if the rock star thing doesn’t work out for you.”
Arrgh.
It takes a certain kind of person to be a teacher – especially in a public school setting – and I ain’t that kind of person. Too many of my aunts, and even my mother, stood at a whiteboard/chalkboard and tried to maintain order in a classroom full of students that didn’t always want to be there, and even worse didn’t always appreciate the hard work they were putting in for so little pay.
Not my idea of a good time, and certainly not a cushion I’d like to fall back to if things in my dream career didn’t work out.
Now I know what Mom was getting at. She didn’t want to see me trodding home, tail tucked between my legs when Universal Music sent me a rejection letter (they did, sort of). She didn’t want me to get my heart broken or end up drugged out on the road. She didn’t want to see me lose everything to an unscrupulous “manager” or something else like that.
She basically just wanted me to be safe, have a nice comfy job with benefits, put in my 40 hours and go home healthy and happy.
Because to her, SOMETHING was better than nothing.
What she didn’t realize is that, for an entrepreneur, that life isn’t something. It’s more NOTHING than you could possibly imagine.
Or maybe she did.
Mom constantly had her hand in some entrepreneurial endeavor. There was a running commentary in our family about the new business venture my mom had every season: snow plow, antique store, ebay, etc. As a child, I remember staying up all night pressing the “print” button over and over for a document she sold in local stores that charted the winning lottery number trends for the past 10 years.
She was quite an entrepreneur. Yet she never climbed out of the poverty bucket. She was a true “Shin-Ob-ite” as I like to call it. Always being pulled from one money making venture to another. As soon as the income would slow down in one venture, she’d move on to the next.
And therein was the dilemma that shaped her perspective and desire for me to have a fallback plan.
She didn’t want to see me starving, scraping together every penny – picking up pop cans, recycling copper wire, holding endless garage sales – just to keep my kids fed with a roof over their heads. She wanted me to have stability, financial security, peace of mind.
That would be great for someone that actually valued that stuff. Much to my husband’s chagrin, those are lesser priorities for me. Yes, I want to be sure my mortgage is paid, and that the kids won’t starve, but for me, taking a risk is part and parcel to the entrepreneurial life I’ve chosen.
The plan b breaks my heart – it’s a crutch. It keeps so many amazingly talented people from ever living their dreams because of fear.
I filed bankruptcy after my ‘young and stupid days’ in my 20′s. Here’s what I learned: If you go bankrupt, your credit will be in the toilet, but you won’t die. You just have to learn to live on less, and financing (credit, etc) is a little harder for a while. You can survive and come out even stronger on the other side.
I worked as a financial advisor for a while. Here’s what I learned: most people have some kind of financial horror story – student loans, old debts from bad relationships, overspending, secret credit cards – and all of it can be resolved.
I was on welfare for a while. Here’s what I learned: It sucks. The way the system worked in my community made it virtually impossible for you to pull yourself out of the system as long as you were using the system. So I got off welfare, and busted my butt to get the bills paid.
Plan B will hold you back. I never got that music ed degree. I do have a degree in music theory/music history, with a minor in vocal performance and 2 albums to my credit. I toured, recorded, promoted and THEN decided to make a change. I wasn’t a Rock Star, per se, but I did all the things I wanted to do as a rock star – including getting a standing ovation from an arena of screaming fans. I didn’t have to live a rock star lifestyle to live my dreams.
Did I settle for a Plan B? Nope. I changed my vision for my life.
I got the degree I wanted, but I still don’t use it in my daily life. I once read somewhere that about half of the degrees in the U.S. go unused because we end up working in different fields. I wanted to be a musician. I did that (I still do from time to time). Then I decided that having a family would be cool. So I’m doing that now. And as my vision evolves, so will my plan A.
But I will never have a “fallback plan” like my mom envisioned. To me, that’s like chickening out.
No one ever aspires to their “plan B”. That’s the safety net we think we’re putting in place “just in case”. What ends up happening, though, is that we spend so much of our lives focused on laying the safety net that we never actually pursue the dream. “Plan A” becomes a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” in our pile of past regrets, and we often never get back to it.
We need to be a little more fearless, and take risks while we can. Pursue our dreams relentlessly.
I was recently interviewed by a smart and amazingly talented high school student. She aspires to be an author some day and wanted feedback about how I wrote my book, and any suggestions I could give her to help her on her way.
“Start NOW.” I said. “Don’t wait. Write all you can now so that you can get better and better over time.”
She’s creative and tells great stories. She’s also self-conscious, as most teenage girls are. She has no clue how much her life will change in the next few years, and the stories she starts writing now may end up being fuel for some of her best work when she’s older.
To her folks, who I’m sure would prefer she select a “safer” profession, I say: don’t let her have a fallback plan. Let her chase this dream relentlessly. Teach her how to manage the little bit of money she’ll earn along the way. Expose her to other options, but never pressure her to choose safety over her dreams. Encourage her to study and hone her craft and fund it without taking on debt. Help her be the best she can at whatever she ultimately chooses as her career path, and above all, let her know that no matter what she chooses, she is loved just as relentlessly.
Let her stumble. Make her sleep on the couch if she comes back home, and don’t make it too easy for her. If she really wants to chase a dream, she’s got to be up for the run – it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. As long as she finishes the race, she’s won it.
And if she decides she’s not up for the run, that’s fine, too. Then she’s just revising her vision. It’s NOT a fallback plan.
That’s what I would have wanted my folks to do for me.
The Dichotomy of Me
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. - Pablo Picasso
Don’t misunderstand. I LOVE my work. I love the clients I coach, the flexibility I have to be with my family. There’s very little I don’t like…
…except having to choose between different projects. There’s only so much time in the day, and if I want to honor my family, and my client community, I have to be at least a little picky about projects I promote.
Many of you know I lead a sort of “double life”. I began my online career coaching direct sales professionals. Last year, I launched the Direct Sales Super Summit as a tool to help those clients (and others) achieve greater levels of success in their business. We had so much positive feedback, that we had to change the name to better reflect the audience. We now have about a 50/50 mix of direct sellers and small business owners. Changing the name was a tough call, but it enabled me to get folks like Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller to participate.
In that name change, though, was all kinds of anxiety for me. It meant stepping back from my direct sales focus and embracing the audience I now call home: business minded women and entrepreneurial moms.
The bulk of my clients are still direct sellers, but I’ve noticed that where other direct sales coaches and trainers often complain about how flaky their customers are, I have NEVER had that problem – okay, I had one customer that was a dork, but she flew the coop eons ago. My customers are loyal, honest, and willing to invest in themselves to grow a real business through their direct sales company.
Perhaps that’s the most important distinction: my clients see themselves as business owners. And yet, so much of the world still lumps all direct sellers into the “is this a pyramid scheme?” category.
So I’ve been torn between trying to be the champion of what I call “direct sales professionals” and working with entrepreneurs. The funny thing is, they are one and the same.
And I didn’t figure that out until just now.
I knew it internally. In my heart. I say it all the time – you are the business owner of “You, Inc.” and you need to run your direct sales business like a business and not an expensive hobby. But I also realize that message applies across the board to other entrepreneurs trying to get established in their industry: health coaches, theater owners, web designers, videographers, actors, author – you name it. You have to run a business with a focus on profit, otherwise, it’s an expensive hobby.
I’ve coached direct sellers, and I love it. I’ve also coached all the other clients I mentioned above. There doesn’t seem to be much correlation between them, does there?
Except for that “expensive hobby” concept.
So as I sit here writing this, it becomes even more apparent to me that I don’t need to decide between working with direct sales pros and entrepreneurs. In serving one, I am serving both.
Sure direct sales has a bit of lingo that goes along with it: bookings, recruits, shows, etc. But the principles are the same: create a sustainable business that will help my client achieve their goals, including flexibility of time, increased income, and the ability to live life on their terms.
That’s pretty much the same set of goals that most entrepreneurs have.
All this time, I’ve been told that I needed to choose. I couldn’t serve two masters. Managing two newsletters would be a challenge. As a result, I haven’t launched my newsletter for The Renaissance Mom community yet. I’ve been focusing on creating a separation between the two brands so that I could better ‘segment my market’ – whatever that’s supposed to mean.
The irony is that most of the direct sellers that read “PartyOn!” each week have also signed up to hear more about the Renaissance Mom – without much prompting on my part. And many of the people I expect to attend my live event this August are direct sales pros that are moms, who need to find balance in their lives, just like any other entrepreneurial mom.
Funny how that works.
So I’m all through with arm wrestling with myself – at least about this issue. There’s a box on the page where you can sign up for the new Renaissance Mom Newsletter (I’ve got to give it a name, though, I suppose). You can visit HomePartySolution.com to register for the newsletter for Direct Sales Pros, “PartyOn!”. Yep, that means I’m putting out two newsletters now. God help us all. I hope my assistant can handle all the spell checking.
It also means I’ll be launching new programs – maybe even at the same time. I have an entire system to help busy moms manage their lives and their business. I’ve been wanting to share it for almost a year now, and haven’t been able to find “the right time” to do it. Here’s a glimpse at the projects sitting on my desk that are ready, and just waiting for me to get them launched:
- Direct Sales 102: Sell More to Earn More
- The PEACE System: Do less, achieve more in 10-20 minutes a day
- Direct Sales 201: Core skills for Direct Sales Leaders
- The Renaissance Mom LIVE Event (okay, that’s happening in August, but we haven’t started selling tickets yet!)
These projects are pretty much in the can. But I’ve been grappling with timing things, sharing too much info, and overloading my readers with too many promos.
Ugh. Maybe I’m expecting too much from my list, but I think you’re smart enough to know what will work for you and what won’t. If I’m sending you too much email, you’ll let me know – (I try to keep it to 1 or 2 messages a week if you’re not in a current program). If you’re on multiple lists, I trust you know what you’re doing. If I’m totally up in the night, I’m going to trust that you’ll call me on it.
And if I’m wrong, I’ll get a flood of unsubscribes, and I’ll have to start from scratch.
Does that sound reasonable? Am I just a goofball for actually putting faith in my list of loyal subscribers? I’d love your feedback. Post a comment below and let me know what you think about the projects I’m planning. Sound good? Sound stupid? Your feedback matters.
Confessions of Self Worth – Part 2
www.TheRenaissanceMom.com
You never know your full impact.
When I was in one of my college law courses, we talked about ‘intervening negligence’. The scenario was that a cat on a window ledge knocked over a flower pot, which plummeted some 10 stories to the ground below, where it shattered, a bicycle then blew a tire and caused a chain reaction-type series of events that eventually led to a 3-car pileup and a death.
The question was, who was ultimately at fault?
I’m not going to tell you the answer (partly, because I can’t remember) – it doesn’t matter anyway. What I remember from that scenario is exactly what I mentioned at the head of this post: You can never fully know your impact.
Some chance encounter by a cat somewhere left a guy dead. I’m sure that his family didn’t expect that. And I’m sure that no one could have predicted the outcomes – or the potential outcomes.
Others have referred to this as the “butterfly effect” – a chaos theorem about how the beating of a butterfly’s wing on one continent has the potential to change the weather elsewhere. It’s an interesting theory that is more relevant to human behavior than we might think.
For example, the other day, I got an email that put me in an incredibly good mood. It caused me to send a tweet to the person that sent the email. At the same time, that person was engaged in a not-so-groovy convo with someone intent on attacking him. It wasn’t until AFTER my tweet that I saw this discussion blazing. In retrospect, I’m sure he thought I was sending him good vibes in light of the flame war that was going on, but in reality I wasn’t.
Does that make the good vibes any less valuable? No. In fact, he might have thought them MORE valuable, given the context (that I knew nothing about).
It’s about what we value. In the moment that we find value in it.
That smile, frown, wink, glare or other innuendo you send out into the world can have any kind of value to the person that is on the receiving end of it.
And we can NEVER know how far our impact is felt.
We have a few of choices:
1. Choose the lowest possible value.
2. Choose the best possible value.
3. Chose something along the spectrum between the two.
As business owners, we justify the bulk of our value as humans in the work that we do – our ‘tangible’ contribution to the workaday world.
This is such horrifying shame.
It’s why people end up talking about who they are in terms of the work they do, rather than the life they live and how they contribute to society.
It’s why moms feel guilty about not being a better mom when they scold their children in front of their parenting peers, and even more guilty about having to carve time out of their work schedule to tend to those children with Dr. appointments, soccer games, and back to school shopping.
Instead, why not choose the higher end of the spectrum?
Instead of assuming that what we do (or more to the point, who we are) has little impact in the world, why not decide that we are creatures of significance?
Why not attribute to ourselves the value we rightfully deserve? We may not ever know that the smile we gave to the officer this morning put him in a better mood. We may not know that his better mood kept him from writing a ticket to a speeder, and instead just gave him a warning. We may never know that the warning kept that speeder from getting angry with his kids when he got home.
Or not.
But why not just live that way?
So instead, let’s give ourselves more credit for the good things we do and stop knocking ourselves around when we’re not quite hitting the mark. This isn’t a license to get lazy- since we as hardworking entrepreneurial moms rarely get a day off in the first place!
But let’s stop questioning our value and just ASSUME that we make a difference. We are important, significant, and NEEDED to keep our businesses, our lives, and our families running like a well-oiled machine….
…because we ARE. We DO make a difference. Every snotty nose you wipe is one less bout of pink eye. Every business meeting is food in the mouths of our kids, and clothes on their back – and the co-pays or deductibles for those doctor visits. Every new client makes it easier to take a day off later. Every day off makes it less stressful to tackle those big client projects when we return.
We are important, significant, and NEEDED to keep our businesses, our lives and our families running like a well-oiled machine.
As parents, we sometimes don’t realize HOW important we are until some 20 years after the kids are birthed. I remember growing up thinking that my Mom was so uncool, and didn’t have a clue – as I’m sure most kids do. I also remember fighting with her constantly. It wasn’t a great childhood. But when I ‘grew up’ I got a clue myself.
I’ve often said that when I moved to Utah, that 1752 mile distance was the best thing to come between me and Mom. It gave me the space I needed to figure out who I was, and how to be a parent to my own kid. I was able to embrace my own self-worth, and stand on my own a bit. When I came back to Michigan, kid in tow, I remember sharing with my Mom how grateful I was that she raised me to be so independent.
Now I miss her differently and have a different kind of gratitude. She’s been dead for a couple of years now, and I miss the opportunity to get a second opinion from ‘Dr. Mom’ or have an extra set of hands when the kids are sick. That’s a gratitude she’ll never know.
This past year, I’ve changed my approach. I’ve decided instead that I need to ASSUME my kids will be grateful and live my life that way. It’s not a matter of being arrogant. It’s actually an inspiration to me to hold me more accountable in the ways I am a Mom and business owner.
Because I may never know for sure what lessons my kids will take away, why assume it’s the bad stuff? Especially since my definition of ‘bad’ may not even jibe with theirs.
The result? I’ve stopped worrying so much about whether or not I’m a bad mom, or a bad business owner. I can look more ‘logically’ at business situations and get stuff handled. I can also stop worrying about being ‘too emotional’ with my kids. Kids want us to be emotional, to sometimes dote, to sometimes kiss their boo-boo’s, to sometimes just sit and have a good cry with them.
There’s nothing wrong with either, and it’s helped me to find my own balance between the two. And by assuming I have value, others do too. Which ties back directly to our lesson from Part 1: If you don’t believe you have value, how will anyone else?
The next step is to stop worrying about how other people value you (or don’t), and value yourself, regardless. One feeds the other.
And remember Dr. Seuss: ‘Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.’
Or something like that.