Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘acceptance’

I have recently been observ­ing some folks that are resist­ing change…and isn’t it funny how the thing that we most WANT in life can elude us, until we give up the WANTING altogether?

I am sure many peo­ple have done the same thing.  As soon as they give up the NEED to have some­thing a cer­tain way, then life all of a sud­den gets eas­ier and they get the thing they were look­ing for.  In fact, it usu­ally just falls into their lap with­out hav­ing to try.  It’s the ol’ “A watched pot doesn’t boil!”

You can also say that it’s, HOLDING on TOO TIGHT!  And when I was dis­cussing this exact resis­tance to change over lunch with my hus­band, imme­di­ately my very favorite movie came to mind, Top Gun.  The rea­son why the pro­tag­o­nist, Mav­er­ick ever got the oppor­tu­nity to train as a fighter pilot was because his pre­de­ces­sor, Cougar, resigned as a fighter pilot after an intense exchange with a Russ­ian Mig Fighter.

The res­ig­na­tion went like this, “I’m hold­ing on too tight Mav­er­ick, I’ve lost the Edge!” He turned in his wings and resigned as a pilot.

What really hap­pened to Cougar is that became attached to the out­come.  He wanted to con­trol the out­come, which for him meant, he didn’t want to die in a com­bat exchange (well, most peo­ple wouldn’t, but fighter pilots train to elim­i­nate that fear alto­gether!!)  That very fear and desire to con­trol the out­come changed his abil­ity to be an effec­tive Top Gun pilot. For any effec­tive fighter pilot, you must fly on instinct and be able to TRUST your­self, there is no time for thought or con­trol.  You can­not even fathom the out­come, once you do, you have lost the edge, you no longer fly on split sec­ond instinct and you can’t FEEL your intuition.

The same is true for entre­pre­neurs.  You are skill­ful at what you are doing. You decided to become an entre­pre­neur for some rea­son, and that rea­son is that you are GOOD, no, you are GREAT at what you do.  Becom­ing a skill­ful entre­pre­neur is sim­i­lar to how fighter pilots train.  They train, and make mistakes.…correct their mis­takes, and train more.  And Repeat.

Effec­tive entre­pre­neurs do the same thing! Try, mis­take, cor­rect, repeat!

No fighter pilot on their first run will ever be per­fect, it’s IMPOSSIBLE!  As will being an effec­tive entre­pre­neur, you will not be per­fect your first week, IMPOSSIBLE (or ever for that mat­ter, so stop try­ing!)  Trust me, I fell on my face so many times as a new entre­pre­neur,  its amaz­ing that I didn’t need plas­tic surgery to put my nose back in place!  It takes train­ing, try­ing and mis­tak­ing to refine your skill.

Let me repeat…you must make mis­takes! Every nor­mal and effec­tive entre­pre­neur does!  (Phew, so glad I am normal!)

And when it comes to the hold­ing on too tight, we see that a lot with entre­pre­neurs and their fear around money.  They now all of a sud­den dis­con­nect from their intu­ition and instinct and start want­ing to con­trol the out­come!  They must not be try­ing hard enough, they must do more, they must be failing…and on and on… Such a com­mon story!!

And like a fighter pilot, you, as an entre­pre­neur have cer­tain intrin­sic abil­i­ties to go with the flow.  When you set your inten­tions, fol­low your intu­ition, and TRUST that your actions will be guided with­out too much thought, there is the magic flow.   It is the same flow that the pilots feel when they are at the top of their game.  Lit­tle con­trol is needed, it feels almost effortless.

Mal­com Glad­well wrote a whole book on this sub­ject of trust­ing your intu­ition called “Blink”.  He writes, “…I hope that by the end of this book, you will believe it as well — that the task of mak­ing sense of our­selves and our behav­ior requires that we acknowl­edge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of ratio­nal analysis.”

So, my ques­tion to you, whether you’re an entre­pre­neur, a  “non-preneur”, or a fighter pilot:  What are you hold­ing on to so tightly that causes you to lose your edge?

I’d love to hear!  And if you’re curi­ous at all about how I help peo­ple find and KEEP their EDGE, visit my page about Suc­cess Coach­ing Or just visit me any­way just to say hi!!  I love company!

Many Adven­tures to You!!

Maken­zie

I would be lying if I said that being a mom was what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact it was the last thing on my mind. Our old­est son came into our life a total sur­prise when I was 24. At 18 years old, I walked out of church ser­mon when the pas­tor was insist­ing that a woman’s place was at home with her kids. No way, no how.…hell no!

It was 15 years later that I would even think about step­ping foot into a church again. Why? For my kids. Curi­ous isn’t it?

It is such an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion that one’s life takes from being totally solo, to now fly­ing with lit­tle wing­men. I’m the mamma plane and they fol­low my every move. For the last 7 years, I have to admit, I was some­what annoyed that I couldn’t fly on my own, they were in my flight formation.

I really fought being a mother, every last ounce in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, I loved them so much. What I hated is what I thought being a mom meant. I thought it meant I had to bake cook­ies, I had to be extra car­ing, I had to be atten­tive, I had to be “soft.” That wasn’t who I thought I was.

The fun­ni­est thing is that, when I decided to quit fight­ing moth­er­hood, I learned an inter­est­ing fact about myself: I don’t think I’m a typ­i­cal mom, and that’s okay–it’s really okay. And then, I found out that I really really like these lit­tle wing­men! In fact, I find that I learn more from them per­haps than they do from me for instance:

Life is Sim­ple and Not Complicated

Chil­dren do not see a rea­son to com­pli­cate life. They wake up…no…they bounce out of bed, hop-hop-hop down the hall to the kitchen table. They’re just happy to see the sun shin­ing and be awake! They don’t carry the bag­gage from yesterday’s events with them, they’re excited to see what today brings!
Rarely do they scour their closet for the per­fect out­fit, won­der­ing who they may need to impress today. Nope. They get dressed in what­ever clothes fit, and carry on about cre­at­ing fun!

Ques­tion Even the Basic Assumptions

My older son asked me one day: “Mom, why do peo­ple con­fuse their Left and Right, but they don’t con­fuse their Up and Down?” *Silence* Um…ummmm…hmmm… That’s a really good ques­tion son, I am not quite sure how to answer that. Up, down, left, right, all direc­tional, but maybe if our head was mounted in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, we wouldn’t be so con­fused about the left and right? I have no idea.

For­give­ness is Natural

Yes, we get frus­trated with our kids, and some­times irra­tionally so. We get tired, we get cranky, and then they have to screech at the top of their lungs the most annoy­ing sound in the world! Then here comes the evil mommy scream and yell.… Only to feel guilty about doing that 10 min­utes later. We go to apol­o­gize, and they eas­ily and read­ily accept the apol­ogy, it is nat­ural for them to for­give. Car­ry­ing grudges, hat­ing peo­ple and dis­dain is very for­eign to them.

There is Fun Around Every Corner

As I am writ­ing this post, my 5 year old has found my kitchen rolling pin, sit­ting on the office chair and play­ing “make the pizza” with his older brother. (Although hon­estly, I am wait­ing for one to hit the other over the head with the makeshift weapon!) Every wak­ing moment is fun and excit­ing. No won­der they love to pop out of bed! Where did we lose this fun and excite­ment as adults? Per­haps we don’t see the won­der and fun in everyday…everyday becomes a chore for us.

Since I became the Adven­tur­ous Mom, I have real­ized that I appre­ci­ate my chil­dren more than they could know. I strive to become more like them, more curi­ous, more for­giv­ing, liv­ing sim­pler, ques­tion­ing assump­tions, for­giv­ing quickly and hav­ing fun…every day!

What have your beau­ti­ful chil­dren taught you?

Every­day and every week, I keep expect­ing life to get “eas­ier” but some­how it never really gets eas­ier, but there are days that I work really hard and feel accom­plished and there are days that I barely feel like I am keep­ing my head above water! Up and down…up and down…up and down. What I find that with each expe­ri­ence I learn more and my tol­er­ances for dif­fi­cult things improves. What I am also find­ing is that the world around me isn’t nec­es­sar­ily chang­ing, but I am chang­ing and my responses are chang­ing.
I am a self-proclaimed over-achiever. This is a bless­ing and a curse at the same time. It has cer­tainly served me well in my career. On the reverse side of the coin, I real­ize that I some­times expect too much of myself. I expect to have a fan­tas­tic and per­fect day every­day! I think I will always expect that, but there are forces that are out of my con­trol that occur in this world that inten­tion­ally or unin­ten­tion­ally seek to ruin my day. I acknowl­edge those occur­rences.… and what I’ve learned to do now is be curi­ous about my response! Instead of get­ting angry, sad, mad or depressed, instead of dwelling on the issues for days and day and los­ing a lot of sleep, I become curi­ous about the prob­lem and my response to the prob­lem. This is a really dif­fi­cult task because I just want to react. I wanted to be Mamma Bear and go after the prob­lem that was con­fronting my first grader, I wanted to dig my claws into the prob­lem and tear it up!! But that response would not have been ben­e­fi­cial to me, or to the teacher for that mat­ter. I look back and ask myself, “Did I respond well to that sit­u­a­tion?” How could I have bet­ter han­dled it? That was very stress­ful, and I think I did okay. I would give myself a 6/10. (Here I go judg­ing myself.) But a 6 is far bet­ter than would have been my response level of a 2 last year! I’m improv­ing, I’m becom­ing aware, I’m learn­ing how to self cor­rect.
My point in talk­ing about my responses is that I am learn­ing it is okay to make mis­takes. But the real mea­sure of matu­rity is how do you respond to those mis­takes, and how do you respond when life throws you a curve ball? Are you the bat­ter that adjusts her swing? Or are you the bat­ter that swings expect­ing every ball to be a fast­ball, then get mad at the pitcher for throw­ing a curve? Real­ize that life hap­pens, it hap­pens up and down…up and down. How do you respond to the ups and downs? Adjust your­self, your response, and be curious!