building resilience

Creating Space

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As a serial creative entrepreneur you might love the chaos and the dot connecting just as much as you hate the distress that comes with it.

Let’s be honest you logically understand that order and structure serves you well, but one of your gifts is the ability to see that midpoint which others seemingly can’t spot.

Ultimately however, before getting to the next level one must decide to create space.

Once you’ve extracted the creation from the chaos, reduce, declutter, reorganize and THEN repeat.

This goes for both the physical realm as the digital one.

Growing up, we moved around a lot. It had something to do with expenses I suppose but we never had these conversations. We went from having few possessions to acquiring more and having more than enough , which was a blessing. Where we fell short as a whole was the ability to organize, manage all we were blessed with. Add the stress of not understanding many things about the legal and business world and it led to a chaotic workspace created by yours truly. Don’t be fooled I enjoyed all the learning but I’d be trying to understand loss mitigation while working on my PreCalc or physics homework while worrying about the fact that all the noise at home wouldn’t let me focus on my homework, while wondering if my crush liked me back, you know teenager things. It was a mess. I was a mess. As Sadia Khan recognizes in herself, I have and have had “nothing to complain about” and yet I also carried with me tons of insecurity. Despite love, family and accomplishments, for some reason it’s what I used to gravitate towards. Somehow the mixtape playing over and over in my mind was not very kind to myself.

I knew one thing though listening to the wisdom of those older than me would do me good. The most wise would share that despite their success, ultimately what mattered most was time. Time doing what you love, time with loved ones. Time. Years later I’ve learned to recognize it as a gift this ability to appreciate time, to choose the difficult vs. the easy. Despite my choice to understand this concept I have in fact fallen short of my ideal of someone who fully appreciates time.

I’ve grown to understand that the gifts I’ve been blessed with are my responsibility to learn how to best showcase them and share the lessons to in fact save others time, and be of service.

What I’ve found is that clarity comes in different forms. There are different roads that lead to the same destination. As well as there being different destinations worth getting to. Choosing to endeavor on a journey no one else has tread before is like choosing to walk directly into the storm, sometimes you’ll have enough time to get the umbrella or to find shelter and others… not so much. With every new nugget of knowledge comes the opportunity to use it, store it, invest it or completely dispose of it.

If you find yourself at a crossroads it might be time to create some mental space and dispose of the thoughts, actions, habits and routines that keep you from progressing. Create space in your schedule to improve. Create physical space by removing broken, torn or damaged items ( Book Recommendations: the Life Changing Habit of Tidying Up, Essentialism) Create mental space by no longer holding onto insecurities, self doubt and negative self fulfilling prophecies. It will take … time and effort. You might find yourself repeating what you swore you wouldn’t or breaking that new years resolution. However, resilience is built through repetition. If you haven’t conquered the vice, just try one more time ( and again as necessary.)

#faceittillyoumakeit #alwaysberesilient

April Showers Bring May Flowers... | Your Attitude Towards Self Awareness

Dear Friend,

It has been rather cold lately. We’ve had a couple of dreary days and even a bit of snowfall. I asked myself, “ it is spring right?” And then I kindly reminded myself, that I created a “Hello Spring!” Post for the contracting business. Internal conversations have us thinking we really need our own comedy show sometimes (just me?).

The exciting thing about change is that if we make the decision to follow the direction towards optimization of productivity and we learn to give ourselves and others grace, what blooms can be really beautiful. Gaining the understanding that you’ve overcome a particular challenge before and that you will in fact face it and overcome this new version of it is truly satisfying.

The catch is understanding who you are. Who you truly are. Not the projection of others of you or the perception, but the real you. This seems to come with time, at least that has been my personal experience.

Identifying, what helps you figure these things out about yourself is crucial but not impossible, even if at times it seems so. In our culture today, it seems there is much confusion about many things and one of the tools we have been blessed with its availability of, is language. Any language. A way to communicate, comprehend, explain and pass on information. It seems it is our responsibility to make the most of what we have and if we fall short (as some of my ideas expressed in this very post might display), learn more, apply more, keep going, until you find the word that truly describes what is.

Although we might experience many failures, or dreary rainy April Showers, the flowers will come, perhaps in May.

withallmysweetness,
Marii [:),<3.]

Accountability as an Entrepreneur

Who/What are you accountable to?

Your family?

…friends?

… clients?

… employer? …soon to be ex boss?

…employees?

…audience?

… others?

… Yourself?

…Your Vision?

…Your Dreams?

…Your Mission?

When dealing with change we often get caught up in the emotion of the process. We do what is comfortable, we avoid making a wave to perhaps “keep the peace”. This emotion stops all progress, it causes procrastination. Finding the root of the problem is only one small step towards resolving an issue but it is a step towards creating momentum.

If you choose to pursue an entrepreneurial path, know that it will be challenging. I don’t intend to ever sugar coat the reality that is this particular lifestyle. From experience and from listening to others’ stories, no path is easy. One thing I like to remind myself is it all depends on the type of stress you want to deal with. This is why building resilience is in my opinion one of the best things you can do. As you establish the habit of getting back up after things have gone wrong it becomes second nature to pick yourself up.

Without accountability, our reasons to keep going have no foundation. Our WHY, has to be rock solid.

If figuring out your why has been challenging, pay careful attention to what makes you take action toward accomplishing the most daunting of tasks on your to do lists.

A few Qs to ask ourselves include:

What have you been procrastinating on? & Why?

How would you go about making sure someone else had completed the tasks if you had delegated it but the responsibility still fell on you?