As you have certainly noticed I have been on a forced hiatus for over a month now from the blog, and if you follow me on social media you probably know that on November 28th I got into a terrible tragic accident with my children and my mother in law. We all miraculously got out of the wreck alive. We all will be alright eventually and are oh so very thankful.
Because I was unable to work for almost a month I have been concentrating on catching up with that but I still wanted to share one more article with you on here before the end of the year.
This year’s mantra was ‘conquer your fears!’ – suiting, right?! Well, it’s been just that. I started this year promising myself that I would not be the deer in the headlight when it came to my fears and that I would go marching on towards my goals. As my pastor said on Sunday “fears has so many tentacles” and it wasn’t easy but for the most part I escape the beast and learned some precious lessons from it.
Here are 10 main things I have learned this year:
LESSON 1- Saying ‘no’ is absolutely alright and necessary quite often. We are all scared of rejection and hearing that ‘no’. But often than not we are also completely frozen and incapable to say ‘no’ ourselves out of fear to disappoint others. If you see a giant blinking red light paired with a loud and resonating alarm, please do say ‘no’ before you AND the other person get imprisoned in a more than unpleasant situation.
LESSON 2- Their success isn’t my failure. Comparasion is the thief of joy, oh how true is that. It is such a disservice to yourself and your business to get into the habit of seeing your journey through the lens of somebody else’s. Your successes and failures will always be distorted with that pattern and it will keep you from not only not acknowledging your accomplishments but also it will eventually lead you to giving up.
LESSON 3- Anytime the monetary argument trumps the creative one, you will end up feeling miserable. I absolutely have nothing against making money of course and I wouldn’t pretend I’m only doing it ‘for the art’ but it can’t be your unique goal or reason to be in business. Especially as a creative entrepreneur, you want to be proud of the work you put out there. If you wouldn’t want to add it to your portfolio, don’t do it because the money can’t be that worth then anyways. I suppose the ideal situation would be unless the project knocks your socks off or makes your pencils tango don’t do it, we’re not quite there yet haha.
LESSON 4- Give yourself room for a bad day. Not to be a realist but this is a matter of when not if. Failures happen and that is okay, my friend. The key is to allow yourself those bad days, those not so great sale numbers or those perfectly inconvenient technical issues, to happen to you and be ready for them. Being open to the idea of the inevitable ‘bad day’ lets you prepare for it and face it a lot better emotionally and practically.
LESSON 5- You cannot overwork your way out of busyness. What got you up to your neck in the first place will continue to come back as long as you let it. Working like a mad person “for a season” won’t bring sanity. It will create a pattern of acceptance for the lack of freedom and the overbusy lifestyle. You need a mindset shift, a new pattern, new systems. We have all heard work to live don’t live to work.
LESSON 6- Just as you get what you pay for, you get what you sell for. I have struggled with this one. It’s not so much that I don’t agree with this fact and know its value, for me it’s about getting past that fear of potentially losing clients because of being out of pricing range and willingly charging below what I should because of it. Oh so very guilty of FOMO all the way. It’s such a snowball effect as in the end you work more for less and ultimately are not your best.
LESSON 7- You are not a lost and lonely island. 2015 has been the year of collaborations and connections. I got work with some incredible fellow business owners but most importantly I joined in Reina Pomeroy‘s amazing program Q4 refresh. First of all, find a way to get Reina in your life and secondly mastermind groups are life changing. I have discovered the power of community in a new way and I don’t want to forget it. I have built lifetime relationships with all the Refreshers and I am so excited for more opportunities to meet other inspiring entrepreneurs next year.
LESSON 8- Confidence is appealing. I struggled so much with believing in myself and even more so accepting my own uniqueness and it kept me captive from being successful. It wasn’t until I started feeling and knowing that I had something precious to offer that others were able to see it too. It has to come from within, compliments only cannot carry you to the finish line.
LESSON 9- Balance. Balance. Balance. That should be enough said but I’ll elaborate. My word for 2016 is ‘BE (present)’ and I am very much so looking forward to apply it. 2015 was good to me and I got to see oh so many of my dreams and goals come to pass, but let’s admit it was a madhouse at times and I was a stressed out mama and wife. I know that season is morphing into another one and I am looking forward to applying what I have learned and create a more balanced life and work tandem.
LESSON 10- Last but not least, intentionality is not negotiable. This is a constant goal of mine, in my personal life and in my business. Do it like you mean it, with your work, with your family, with your passions, with all of it. I always want to be aware and intentional of where I am, who I am with and what I am doing. Focus on the task at hand, loving my people the way I should and finding joy at the source – God.
I want to close with this quote “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” – Francis Chan
REVERIE MINGLES: WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WILL KEEP FROM 2015?