“If you want to leave your footprints on the sands of time, be sure you’re wearing work shoes.” – Unknown
This week, I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of More Business of Being Born, a fantastic documentary series about birthing options executive produced by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein. When I arrived at the premiere, Ricki was outside, smiling happily and shaking hands with attendees.
I remembered a tweet of hers from earlier in the day where she said she had been dancing for 4 or 5 hours and I was in awe of how hard this woman works. She and her dance partner, Derek Hough often receive the highest scores on Dancing with the Stars, which means they are dancing like crazy all day, for many days in a row. On top of that, Ricki is raising 2 boys, promoting #MBOBB (More Business of Being Born) and getting ready to launch the new Ricki Lake Show. This woman works HARD and because of this, she is amazing, inspiring… powerful!
Success doesn’t fall into your lap. It is a choice.
As I sat in that movie theater watching #MBOBB, I was touched by the many stories of the birthing experiences that Melissa Joan Hart, Cindy Crawford, Alyson Hannigan, Christie Turlington, Gisele Bundchen, Alanis Morissette and a few others shared. Birth is an experience like no other that involves an incredible amount of focus, love, power and strength. At the same time, as I witnessed these amazing women, I couldn’t help but think about business in relation to the birthing process.
From the moment an entrepreneurial idea is conceived, it must be nurtured and cultivated and finally birthed into the world with thoughtful consideration. We have many choices to birth our businesses and in this process, we can choose to educate and prepare ourselves or just go with the flow (or a combination of both). In the end… some things are out of our control, but the ultimate outcome is a result of our hard work, focus and dedication, combined with some element of destiny.
Business is not easy and neither is child birth, but it is incredibly rewarding. So, how do we stay focused on the mission at hand without getting sidetracked by things like morning sickness, an aching back, a social media troll, delays in production or legal challenges?
The key is to remember your WHY. Visualize what it will look and feel like to achieve your end goal.
Do you want to raise a happy and healthy baby/business? Is your goal to eventually sell your business, so it can grow into an even better and more powerful brand or do you want to sustain it indefinitely? What do you plan to do when the business is sold? Will you donate money to charity? Will you send your children to college? Will you relax in a tropical paradise with your significant other? Will you write a book about it and keep on going? What is your WHY? Write it down, print it out, post it everywhere you will see and remember it every single day.
If we want to dance all day until we are bruised and bleeding, only to slip into a beautiful dress to promote our next baby… while incubating another dream (like Ricki Lake), we have to be willing to go the distance. We have to be willing to put up with the bumps and stumbles in order to make it to the rainbow and realize our dreams. Success doesn’t just fall into our laps because if it did, we wouldn’t appreciate it. We would simply take it for granted. Even parents who adopt babies have to jump through hoops in order to hold that baby in their arms. Right?
So, now I want to ask you this… Are you doing everything you can to prepare yourself for success? Do you know your why? Do you have role models to follow (like Ricki Lake) who can inspire you to keep on going (with a smile on your face) when times get tough and days are long? Are you so in touch with your dreams and your goals that even the “ring of fire” can’t keep you from pushing ahead?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Related Posts
