Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘mentorinng’ Category

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

Part II of “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” we explore find­ing your niche…or what really inspires you.

[I write this for one of my very tal­ented friends that could do almost any­thing but she is strug­gling with find­ing that “niche”. ]

Inevitably I was fooled by think­ing that when one grad­u­ates col­lege, or even high school, that the fairy-career-mother strikes you over the head with what you are des­tined to be for the rest of your life.  This has never hap­pened to me, and from my dis­cus­sions with all of my 20–50 year old  peers, this is not the case for them either.

Don’t Always Fol­low the Leaders

My dad has worked at AT&T for his entire career.  He is the excep­tion not the rule.  My mom on the other hand has worked in quite pos­si­bly every indus­try there is: Amway, Real Estate, UPS, Finance Bro­ker­age, even Taco Bell.  There may not be just ONE right career or busi­ness for your, but maybe several.

Minds change, soci­eties change and so do economies.  Think­ing that you will be in one career or busi­ness for the rest of your life may lead to per­pet­ual dis­ap­point­ment.  Your career or your busi­ness might some­day be extinct is another possibility.

In the early 1900’s, the type­writer man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­nesses were liv­ing high on their prof­its.  Lit­tle did they know that just a few decades later, the basic word proces­sors would become extrav­a­gantly pop­u­lar.  Oh but that’s just a fad! Or so they thought.

The need for telegrams – extinct as the tele­phones and faxes became more preva­lent.  Med­ical tran­scrip­tion­ists? Maybe soon to be extinct as voice tran­scrip­tion tech­nol­ogy is improving.

Don’t get stuck on one idea as the end-all-be-all.  Be as flex­i­ble as the kelp in the ocean, flow­ing with the tide…and ready to break free and catch the wave to the shore.

I want to stress that, it is impor­tant to be adapt­able, and adjust to the cur­rent mar­ket.   It doesn’t mean you won’t be doing what you love; just keep your eyes open for the oppor­tu­ni­ties instead of stuck on ONE idea.

Be Like  a Blackberry

As Wal­lace D. Wat­tles explains in his book “The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich” ,  you must pro­vide more in use value than you receive in Cash value.  Is the niche that you are look­ing at get­ting into going to pro­vide more to your employer or your cus­tomers than maybe you receive in cash?

At first I thought his think­ing was back­ward, “Um hello?  I need to get paid too!”  But it is a very sim­ple philosophy.

I like to take for exam­ple my Black­berry.  I paid $100 for my black­berry plus a monthly fee.  I could argue that my black­berry is worth many times that amount because the use value that I receive is far greater than the actual value.  I can’t count how many times I have been able to close a deal, or keep big dis­as­ters from occur­ring because I had my lit­tle infor­ma­tion por­tal attached to my hip.  So my thought is that the black­berry is worth far more than the $100 and the monthly fee that I pay for the service.

Ask your­self, what skills or knowl­edge do I have that is worth value?  Is my employer or my cus­tomer in need of the value that I can pro­vide them?  What am I really good at doing?

Phone a Friend

Every­one knows the old adage about opinions….everyone has one?  Yet, lis­ten intently on what your friends, cowork­ers, or fam­i­lies are say­ing about your tal­ents.  Are you great at bak­ing?  Are you great at strate­giz­ing? Can you sell ice to Eskimos?

The les­son here is that, although YOU may think you know what you are good at; it is dif­fi­cult to stand and view your own tal­ents from third person.

If you are truly try­ing to find your niche, maybe this is a good time to get oth­ers involved and seek feed­back regard­ing your tal­ents.  It could be as easy as send­ing out a sim­ple sur­vey ask­ing oth­ers to answer what they think are your tal­ents.  Don’t for­get to offer to buy them cof­fee for com­plet­ing it!

Find­ing your niche is a process that con­sid­ers the exter­nal envi­ron­ment and your inter­nal tal­ents.  With the right effort and some help from oth­ers, you may be on the right path to com­ing up with your Dream Life!

At the age of 4 I remem­ber wak­ing up in a hos­pi­tal room barely able to talk in an oxy­gen tent, and tap­ping on the tent to my mom.  I was scared, I didn’t under­stand what was going on, and I couldn’t talk.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out I had epigloti­tis, a rare but fatal child­hood viral con­di­tion that causes the flap that cov­ers your air­way to swell up until it occludes the airway. 

I only sur­vived because my mom heard the stri­dorous breath­ing in my bed­room and took me to the ER imme­di­ately. Per­haps this expe­ri­ence has shaped my life of need for con­stant adven­ture….  Per­haps it is the DNA that is ingrained in me. 

Let me back up a lit­tle bit more…This blog is about moms, let me intro­duce you to my mom. My mother was born poor in a small town in Mis­sis­sippi, a white girl on the wrong side of the tracks.  My mother’s father was a train oper­a­tor and engi­neer, a hard life of work, but that was just his day job, his pas­sion was with motor­cy­cles, fly­ing acro­batic air­craft and boot-legging alco­hol into the dry state of Mis­sis­sippi.  Nor­ton was known to do such dan­ger­ous motor­cy­cle tricks as head­stands on the seat while the motor­cy­cle was in motion.  He lived life on the edge, and raised my mother to do the same. 

At 14, he gave her a birth­day gift…her first motor­cy­cle.  She was arrested by the Merid­ian police because at 14, she didn’t know what a driver’s license WAS, much less pos­sess one.

So at the ten­der age of 18, my mother met a hand­some Navy man, mar­ried and fled the small town in Mis­sis­sippi, never to look back.  Kids were not in her sights, she wanted to live her adven­ture, out of the con­fines of the rigid south­ern tra­di­tions.  In fact, mar­ring a man like my dad was some­what taboo since he was  “Span­ish” and dark skinned.  (She con­fessed to me later in life that she knew he was Mexican/Filipino, but had to tell her dad he was Spanish).

A move to Cal­i­for­nia and over 7 years of mar­riage, my mom decided to try her hand at moth­er­ing.  She had never held a baby before my older sis­ter was born.  But why not go all the way?  Three daugh­ters under 5 years old, all within 18 months apart! My mom is the def­i­n­i­tion of adven­ture. My mom sur­vived the tor­tur­ous baby crazi­ness, and things got bet­ter for her when we were able to walk and talk. 

Adven­tures with my mom were com­mon­place.  I often tell sto­ries of my mom cre­at­ing cir­cuses in our back­yard, com­plete with uni­cy­cles, tightropes, and tram­po­lines.  We would blast music from the record player into the back­yard to prac­tice our cir­cus rou­tines.  Then there was the “urban farm” that wasn’t really a farm, but rather the crow­ing rooster.  I don’t know what obsessed her to get a rooster in our neigh­bor­hood, but need­less to say the neigh­bors weren’t pleased!

My mom wanted to raise us to be inde­pen­dent, strong, pur­pose­ful women.  She even says she  gave us strong “mas­cu­line” names: Casey, Maken­zie and Abbey (okay, well, Abbey skirted the mas­cu­line name, although her mid­dle name is Michael, after my dad since Abbey was really his last attempt for a boy.  Abbey hated it for years, but now I think she’s at peace with it.)

Even the sim­ple bike ride wasn’t nor­mal in our house.  Before we could ride bikes, my mom fig­ured out a way to load us all on her bicy­cle.  Abbey was strapped to her back in a back­pack, I was on the rear child bicy­cle seat, and Casey sat on a home-made seat across the mid­dle bar. (Note that in this pic­ture, Casey grad­u­ated to a reg­u­lar bicy­cle, so it was just me and Abbey on the bike.)  Imag­ine the looks my mom got!  Child bicy­cle trail­ers were not invented then, so she wasn’t let­ting hav­ing kids stop her from going on a bike ride!! 

As I learned how to ride, we fre­quently did 10 and 12 mile rides at the age of 9 down the muddy rocky shores of the San Fran­cisco Bay, with her scream­ing at us the whole way. We didn’t have a choice to quit, she wasn’t car­ry­ing us home! Not only did my mom instill the legacy of adven­ture into us, but she taught us that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!  She was unwill­ing to take no for an answer, and she didn’t stop her life because of kids…we were just extra par­tic­i­pants along for the adven­tur­ous ride!