Hope Is Not A Strategy (Part Three)
Continuing down the loop today, we’re going to pick up the “end game” conversation from yesterday and run with it.
Since you’re still in the middle of my end game, you may be scratching your head yet, trying to piece all this together.
This is where Joan of Arc comes in. According to Wikipedia:
“Joan asserted that she had visions from God which instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.”
When people quote Joan, often it is “I am not afraid… I was born to do this.” But there are two other quotes that I offer today:
“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” (emphasis mine)
“Act, and God will act”
Regardless of your religious persuasion (or lack thereof), you have to credit Joan with an incredibly powerful belief. She knew her end game. She even predicted her own injury on the battlefield.
She knew what she had come here for and to her dying breath, she did it without compromise.
Are you living your belief? In your life, your work, your coming and going, your “rising and resting” as some scriptures would say.
Do you even know what you believe?
Here’s a girl that’s been praying hard for years and finally her end game becomes clear. She figures out the steps in the cycle and makes her move. She achieves her end game.
It’s the same pattern you see in powerful leaders throughout history. The details may be more personal, but the patterns are undeniable. I’ve remarked on more than one occasion about the similarities between the rise of Hitler and one of our more recent presidents. Both were charismatic speakers. Both wrote books about their life that outlined how they’d “change the world”. Both rose to power with a grassroots level of enthusiasm.
Patterns. Cycles.
More recently, you might have heard it called “modeling.” The idea that if you want to be a millionaire, find someone else that has done it, learn from them and model them.
The problem with modeling is that you are NOT them. Your set of beliefs, your core values are probably not the same. Modeling their successes may also mean modeling their failures. Or WORSE.
But finding the patterns… now that’s something that can benefit you. If you want to be a millionaire, don’t just look for one person that’s done it. Look at many people who have done it. What are the commonalities? Where are the patterns, similarities?
Take notes. Lots of them. Then find those commonalities in YOUR life and work.
Then ACT. Take action. Move the ball down the field and see what happens next. See the end game and move relentlessly towards it. If it’s your life’s end game, as it was for Joan, you’ve got to be willing to die for it.
What are you willing to die for?
Are you living that belief?
Read MoreHope Is Not A Strategy (Part One)
It began with a blog post, which led me to Joan of Arc, then twitter, and finally another blog post that led me here.
Lest you think it’s circuitous thinking, give me the next couple of days to bring it into focus for you.
When my uber-helpful coach, Sarah Robinson posed the question “What is Generosity?“, she made the comment that too many people today are touting being generous as some kind of strategy.
I hit reply, almost without thinking and out came this:
IMHO, generosity can’t be a strategy, else it’s not true generosity – or maybe I’m confusing it with altruism. By definition, “Generosity is the habit of giving freely without expecting anything in return.” Any expectation negates the nature of generosity. Generosity is unconditional love in action. It’s not possible if it’s a strategy. Again, “strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.” A particular goal connotes an expected outcome. You can’t have expectation and no expectation in the same gesture.
You CAN have hope. For example, I’m doing this because I want to, and I HOPE that if you like it, you’ll tell people about it. No pressure, no expectation you’ll actually do anything other than receive the gift.
Hope is not a strategy either – at least from what people tell me, but I do a LOT of hoping, backed by action, and it seems to be working for me.
I also cracked that I should probably write a blog post about this, but didn’t feel I had the information to fully flesh out something of value to you.
A day or so later, while clearing off my in-box, I found a story card about Joan of Arc:
“Although she was not educated, Joan was very spiritual, and spent many hours in prayer and in helping others. When she was 13, she began to hear “voices” that carried messages from God. By the time she was 17, she was certain God wanted her to aid King Charles VII of France in his fight against the English. She successfully predicted the defeat in Orleans and was able to pick out the king, who was in disguise.”
Eventually, she was placed on trial, condemned to death as a heretic and burned at the stake.
Later that night, I popped onto twitter, and saw the tail end of a conversation between Sarah, and two of my pals, which triggered this thought in my brain:
Children are “distracted” from the world by their dreams. Adults are distracted from their dreams by the world.
I thought it was kind of poignant, but it felt like one of those timely things to say on twitter that will get retweeted a little and then die. Still, not really thinking much of it, I tweeted it and went to sleep.
Joan of Arc, dreams, visions, faith, hope, kids, all this stuff was swirling in my brain. Somehow it felt like I had been here before, staring at a puzzle with tow pieces still in my hands, not sure how they went together. They were all connected, but I wasn’t sure how.
Ever feel like that?
And then, Les McKeown, smarty pants that he is, made this post that made everything gel. In particular, it was this part of the post that pulled it all together:
“Many child prodigies in various disciplines – notably art, chess and mathematics – appear to be born with a highly attenuated ability to discern intricate patterns.”
Now, I’m not one to call myself a child prodigy. Perhaps that’s because I was fortunate enough to be part of a school program for academically talented/gifted kids from first grade through high school. A program, which sadly no longer exists in my community. I was in a room full of smarty pants kids that excelled in math, music, science, writing, art, etc.
I was not the smartest kid in ANY class, but I was “well rounded”, I guess you could say. I was in the top ten percent in most of my classes. I knew enough to “get by” in every subject, which in that group was getting an A/B average. Seriously, if you got less than a B+, you were usually looked at like an idiot. We all came to respect each other though, because invariably, where one of us was weak, there were others who were strong. And because we were all so socially awkward (think Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network”), we only had each other for the most part.
That’s another lesson for another day.
The point of even dredging up my school days was that the one thing I was better at than anyone else was finding patterns, common threads and other “connections” between seemingly unrelated stuff. I scored exceptionally high on pattern recognition tests, from alpha numeric to shape identification, even when I was young. I could even point out errors in the tests that the administrators didn’t catch.
And since that time, I’ve come to learn that these patterns, connections and correlations exist in nearly every facet of our lives.
We all know that “dumb jock” who ended up being a nobody. Or the cheerleader that got pregnant before graduation. Or the nerd who went on to greatness and was voted “most likely to succeed”. These stereotypes exists because they are patterns.
They are cycles that we can see coming – sometimes from miles away. Like the girl who was rejected from her high school drama club and later went on to be a successful actress. Or the awkward basketball player who went on to become one of the greatest players of all time – after he was rejected by a coach when he was in school.
There is very little in the world that isn’t cyclical in nature. I maintain that if we can’t see the pattern, it’s probably because we just haven’t experienced a long enough cycle to see the full pattern yet.
Think about your favorite stories. What elements of those stories mirror your own life? What elements of those stories are repeated over and over in your life? We can hope it’s the happy endings, but for most of us, we’re caught in the drama of the story.
Hope is not a strategy. Neither for your business nor your life. It’s not a way to get things done – to walk around with our fingers crossed, thinking good thoughts, and offering up wishful “prayers” that our story will have a happy ending.
No you’ve got to DO something. Doing is the strategy.
Many moons ago, I made a conscious decision to ask for what I want. Mom used to say that “the answer is always no if you don’t ask.”
Funny thing about moms, they’re often more right than you care to admit – especially when you’re a kid.
So I started asking. And people started saying yes. Some people say no, but the majority, the overwhelming majority of folks say yes.
I devised a strategy: Ask, with hope.
Ask for that thing, and in doing so, you’re taking action. Take action, and be hopeful about the outcome. Hope, backed by action – or perhaps, action, backed by hope – is a powerful strategy in the world.
It builds businesses. It restores lost friendships, it heals old wounds. It improves lives. It creates new experiences.
It works.
What have you been needing to ask for? Stop asking yourself why you’re not asking for it. ASK for it. Go for it.
Ask, with hope, and watch what happens.
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From Reluctance to Renaissance
When we launched The Renaissance Mom at the beginning of the year, I had no idea what would happen.
Our mission is to help 10,000 mompreneurs and working mothers bring balance to their life and work without apologies or excuses. It was a mission God laid on my heart nearly two years ago to the day.
The journey from there to here has not at all been what I planned nor imagined.
“My ways are not your ways.” says the Lord.
Quite.
In truth, for all the forward motion and “tally-ho!” attitude I bring to my work and my life, I’ve probably been the biggest heel dragger of all when it comes to growing this business.
I never really thought of myself as a “mompreneur” or a “wahm” in the first place. I’ve written before about the negative perceptions people hold about those labels. I, too, held some prejudice about those labels. So much, that I felt compelled to create a new “brand” of working mother – The Renaissance Mom.
Renaissance is about re-birth. Despite any scriptural connotations that might bring to mind, we carefully chose our logo to bring to mind the two most recognizable symbols of rebirth – the phoenix and the cross. Simply put, this company is committed to helping working mothers make the transition from reluctance to renaissance.
Why then, have I been dragging my heels on this business? Several reasons:
- It’s not my business. Yes, I’m the founder, and my name is the owner of record. No, it’s not a company in name only. This is God’s business, not mine. Often times, I get up in the morning inspired to take actions so far removed from my comfort zone, I have a hard time doing them. I constantly ask “why” and find myself doing it anyway. Today I met a charming guy at a local ad agency. We talked for more than an hour as he shared generously some ideas to help promote The Renaissance Mom Experience to a more local audience. I went in with no real idea of what to expect. I walked away with so many blessings, I wanted to cry. It’s hard for me to invest myself fully in something that’s not mine. I’ve been burned by other partners in the past, and trust is hard won from me. The silly thing is, if I can’t trust God as my partner, who can I trust?
- I like being in control. I like having an agenda that I’ve laid out and can work from. God is more extemporaneous than that – at least with me. And although it bugs me a little, I’m trying to go with His flow. But it’s hard, and sometimes downright frustrating. Letting go is not something that comes easy to me. Particularly when I’m “letting go to let God” so to speak. I have many “other” things to do, and sometimes I think I have better things to do. God and I don’t always see eye to eye. Luckily, He still loves me anyway.
- Show me the money. To be frank (perhaps a little too frank), The Renaissance Mom has been entirely funded from the beginning by my other business endeavors. I’m not complaining, just noticing that the company is not profitable, and while I’m doing my best to remain faithful to God’s calling, it would be nice to turn a profit from the work we’re doing to help working moms. Perhaps it’s a bad time to start a company like this, but the demand for what we’re doing has been so overwhelming that we can’t stop now. For an unknown start-up, we’ve had the privilege of helping hundreds of women (and a few men) since January gain more balance and clarity in their lives, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s odd for me to run a company that’s not paying for itself, and if this is the mission God has laid on my heart, then maybe it’s not supposed to be profitable. I haven’t figured that one out yet.
That’s been my journey for the past few months, and through it, I’ve made some tremendous realizations:
- God is always in control. That may sound like a “blatantly Christian” thing to say on a blog, but it’s true. Every time we’ve had a need for this event, there’s been a supply. I’ve been shy about giving the glory for it to God, and that ends today. God deserves the glory, because there’s no logical reason that this event should be happening at all, let alone happening successfully. And it is happening successfully. Whoever heard of bootstrapping an entire 3-day conference? God is miraculous and I need to stop dragging my heels telling other people about it.
- Business is still business. Partners, sponsors and others connected to the work we do still want to see a return – they want to know what’s in it for them. Having a great idea isn’t good enough. Communicating that idea isn’t good enough. Providing the return makes the difference.
- I still have a lot to learn. I’ve never claimed to be anybody’s guru. That’s a role for someone other than me. What I do is connect the dots for people, point them to resources, and hopefully help someone along the way. Very much of my success has been accidental, but now I’m in a position where a significant number of people actually look to me for advice/help. God help us all.
There are other lessons, to be sure, and my own renaissance is ongoing. When you step out in faith in a very public way, there’s bound to be obstacles. I’ve tried to stay low-key for a long time, and it’s just not going to work anymore. You may have already seen the shift, heard the undertones, and wondered what’s going on.
I’ve been pulling together a new approach for clients and folks like you that want to move forward with confidence - out of reluctance and into renaissance. It’s very uncreatively called “30 Days to Renaissance”, and it is my new tool for stopping the heel dragging.
And you can have it free.
In light of my profitability comments earlier, free may be a bad choice, but it’s an e-course, delivered daily to your in-box, so it feels weird to charge you for it. Plus, God said to make it free, so I’m not going to argue with HIM.
You can fill out the opt-in box on our home page or Click here to get more details.
If it takes you from Reluctance to Renaissance, please share it with a friend. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your revelations about moving forward in faith in your life and business.
Read MoreAbout Me
Storyteller. Transformer. Entrepreneur. I've won a few awards for writing, music and design, and I'm not resting on my laurels. I focus my energy on helping you succeed and get results. Be sure to say hi, leave a comment and get involved. That's how I roll. Coming Soon
