Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘living the dream’

I guess grow­ing up, we are often taught to be hum­ble.   As chil­dren, say please and thank you.  If you are given an award, it is fine to dis­cuss it but not to brag about it.  The bible teaches us that humil­ity is a noble qual­ity.  Yet every­one has great­ness hid­den deep inside of them­selves.  It is that great­ness that con­tin­u­ally bub­bles up and shows it’s face.  But, who are you to be great?

So we run around in life, think­ing that we are bound by limitations…who are we to be great?

We aim for small goals because fail­ure is the reminder that we are not sup­posed to be great?  Or is it?

So, here is the Maken­zie Kelly take on this:

Every­one should and is sup­posed to pur­sue their GREATNESS!!  And you know what?  Some­times your great­ness is scary, and out-of-the-box, and totally uncon­ven­tional!  Yet, some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pens when you con­nect to your great­ness; sud­denly the stars align, the uni­verse bows, your ene­mies become your friends, and it FEELS Awesome!

And I would argue that you may be lying to your­self if you say “I have no Great­ness!”  Because in the depths of all of us, there is some­thing that you deeply DESIRE to do, or FEEL com­pelled to do, or YEARN to BE!  So many exam­ples of this have occurred in our his­tory.  The Great Babe Ruth (for­give me because I’m a huge base­ball fan!!) was GREAT at base­ball.  He was not dis­cour­aged by his strike-outs.  In fact, he struck out more times than he hit the ball.  So he did not say to him­self “Man I’m a lousy Base­ball player, I should just quit.”  In fact, he con­tin­ued to go to bat, for what­ever rea­son (was it his great­ness that com­pelled him? Was it his arro­gance?  Was it his igno­rance? We may never truly know.)

It will never be per­fect when you are pur­su­ing your great­ness.  While the uni­verse may align in your favor, there will be dra­matic shifts in your per­spec­tive and your growth.  You will be chal­lenged in ways you have never imag­ined.  Yet this chal­leng­ing will help to pro­pel your growth and your desire to be GREAT.  Stick wtih it!  You are meant for Greatness.….!!

And speak­ing of Great­ness, I invite every­one to visit my NEW Web­site and Busi­ness:  Free­dom Ven­ture Project

This is my Great­ness Rear­ing It’s Head…!  See you there! ~Makenzie

What an excit­ing week it has been for me! So many great things going on.  I recently did an inter­view with a great entre­pre­neur: Josh Roa, The 80 Day Millionaire!

Stop By to Read My Interview

I know what you’re think­ing 80 Days?  Well, I have to tell you that it’s been done before, and this young man’s per­se­ver­ance is absolutely inspir­ing, he is doc­u­ment­ing his every step in his Blog! I have no doubt that 2010 will be an amaz­ing year for him!

So my ques­tion for you in 2010 is: Are you cre­at­ing worth­while goals? Are you aspir­ing to be your great­est like Josh, or are you just cre­at­ing goals so that you won’t fail?

Stop by his blog and lis­ten to my inter­view.  I divulge a lot of infor­ma­tion about me and my businesses!

Josh Roa — The 80 Day Millionaire

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

Many adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

Are you still try­ing to decide what to be when you grow up? Regard­less of what you con­sider grown up: Are you doing what you want to right now? How did you get here?

When I blasted out to my Face­book friends ask­ing them about “What did you want to be when you grow up?” I got var­ied responses and some said they are still try­ing to fig­ure it out. But one good friend sticks out in my mind when she said: “I cer­tainly didn’t want to be a Dish Washer when I grew up.”

Your story is dif­fer­ent from my story but what might be the com­mon thread is that you may be in a life that you feel trapped or it is in con­flict with your val­ues. What I mean by this is not that your boss may be ask­ing you to steal….but per­haps you have a strong value for cre­ativ­ity, and you are audit­ing spread­sheets every day!! Ugh!

Are you really hear­ing that voice inside of you that is dis­sat­is­fied? Is your value free­dom? Free­dom from feel­ing trapped by a job? Or is your value secu­rity? Do you like hav­ing a secure job? None of these val­ues are wrong, they are yours and you should own them.

YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

Some are strug­gling with clar­ity about what is their true call­ing in life. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!!! And let me tell you that this is okay too because no one needs to decide right now. But when you find that call­ing, you will know it because you will stay awake all night and be excited all day to bring into fruition your new found occupation.

Per­haps also, we should view this from another angle: Instead of decid­ing what you want to DO every day to cre­ate money (which is what so many peo­ple fall prey to) What do you want to BE???

One tool that I use to deter­mine what I want to be is a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. It is sim­ple to write a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment here is mine.

My per­sonal mis­sion state­ment defines what I want to be:

• I want to be a cre­ative entre­pre­neur that makes pas­sive income allow­ing me time and money to spend with my fam­ily, to also have adven­ture, and help oth­ers lead suc­cess­ful lives.

No where does this say what indus­try I will work in, nowhere does this exclude me from cer­tain things. This is impor­tant because your mis­sion state­ment should be flex­i­ble to allow for a change of mind, yet be struc­tured enough to give you a roadmap. This mis­sion state­ment out­lines your per­sonal val­ues, what you want to BE and what you WILL achieve by being this per­son. My per­sonal val­ues are tightly linked to free­dom, time and help­ing oth­ers. What are your val­ues? Hon­esty? Power? Fam­ily? Love? Adven­ture? Etc…

What val­ues do you think are impor­tant to you? What do you like doing and as a result, what might you like to be?

I found great sat­is­fac­tion in work­ing as a Para­medic because I was able to both have adven­ture and help oth­ers. Yet, it ended up not being totally ful­fill­ing because it did not allow me the time with my fam­ily that I needed.

Exper­i­ment with your per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. I would love to hear it! What’s hold­ing you back from Liv­ing your Dream?

Rec­om­mended Reading:

The Monk and the Rid­dle by Randy Komisar

Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk

Refuse to Choose by Bar­bara Sher