Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘work’ Category

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

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!

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

Yes, I dropped the ball this week. At least that’s what it felt like. I have to admit that as hard as I try to bal­ance and spin all of my plates, or to jug­gle all of my balls, I, like all, am human. Like a lot of full time work­ing moms, I have a lot of things going on at once. I have my first shift which is my work shift which is career work, my sec­ond shift or wife and mom shift, and then some­where in between I make room for self-renewal, self– care, and per­sonal devel­op­ment. All three are a pri­or­ity to me, but by-far the most del­i­cate of all my respon­si­bil­i­ties is that of being a mother. At this point I am not only respon­si­ble for myself but I have two very spe­cial lit­tle men for which I take respon­si­bil­ity. Luck­ily my lit­tle men are very resilient and for­giv­ing. This week I received word from my son’s teacher that unless his writ­ing skills improved there may be a pos­si­bil­ity he wouldn’t move onto sec­ond grade. “Ouch!” That news stung worse than a dozen wasp stings.

How could I be such a bad mother? How could I drop this frag­ile ball? How did I not see this com­ing? What other balls might I be drop­ping next? I was com­ing off of my “I’m so lucky to be alive” High.…how can this hap­pen now?

I was dis­traught to say the least. It took me sev­eral days, meet­ings with the prin­ci­pal and sched­uled meet­ings with the teacher, phone calls to my mom, dis­cus­sions with my sis­ters and hus­band, my coach, and prob­a­bly half a dozen oth­ers to real­ize that yes Virginia.…I am human. Per­haps my reac­tion was an over-reaction because of the emo­tional nature of this sit­u­a­tion. But another hard les­son learned.…I must real­ize and be okay with the pain that may come by my human fail­ures. Fail­ing is merely a judg­ment, so did I really fail? Who is my biggest judge of this, ME?

Tak­ing a step back, my hus­band and I real­ize that our First Grader WILL be mov­ing onto Sec­ond Grade next year. He is read­ing at Third Grade level and zooms through math like a lit­tle savant. He is a Cy Young award win­ning pitcher that stinks at bat­ting. He needs some bat­ting prac­tice, and he’ll even­tu­ally be mak­ing base hits and RBIs.

So, solu­tion num­ber one is get­ting my son the help he needs with writing.…EASY! Solu­tion num­ber two is learn­ing how to curb my emo­tional response when I have these big upsets. Not so easy, but do-able. In pre­vi­ous blogs, I describe the pain/pleasure con­tin­uum and how life’s dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions are used to teach us lessons. This was a big les­son for me, for two rea­sons: 1. I feel I should com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively with my children’s teach­ers so I don’t get blind-sighted with this kind of news. 2. Antic­i­pate (but don’t expect) emo­tional upsets and learn a con­struc­tive emo­tional response to these set-backs. I don’t think that I refuse to get “mad, sad, angry, or frus­trated”, but allow myself to feel these emo­tions with­out being per­son­ally destruc­tive with these emo­tions. They’re healthy emo­tions to set us back on the right course, help us regain our bal­ance and then to become bet­ter bal­anced so we don’t get thrown off-kilter so eas­ily again.

So, yes, I am human. I do have “bad days”, I am learn­ing to keep my bad days fewer and far between. I strive to live each day enjoy­ably, with pas­sion and doing what I love. My chil­dren deserve a mom that is passionate.…teaching them this life les­son is invaluable!