Ready to Rebound!

Quitting is something akin to failure in the traditional sense, it seems, but letting go of something that is no longer serving you makes good sense to me.  “Never say die” applies to the old school determination of plowing through, slogging through the tough stuff day by day and I get that.  I’m certainly not advocating throwing your responsibilities into the wind and giving up prematurely, before you have done what you could to uphold your end of the bargain.  But oftentimes, I see something other than that going on in myself and in those around me.  I see an almost idiotic attachment to the idea of the struggle itself, to the idea of never giving up, as if killing yourself in the process is somehow required to be a good person. 

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Talking to people about my upcoming book, Rebounding, and listening to people’s stories has really served to remind me what a universal experience it is to grieve a setback or a loss, especially one that is financial in nature.  When I bring up what I’m going through, many times I see a look of relief on the person’s face as they reveal to me an experience they had, maybe recently maybe 25 years ago.  An experience that they may not have shared with me otherwise.  Why not?  Because we tend to define ourselves in terms of our financial status – we’re successful when we are doing well financially and when we aren’t, we’re not.  And we certainly don’t want anyone to know when we’re not.  The relief that comes along with being able to talk about it for many people is a huge step in the right direction.  It helps to bring closure and

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The first day of December…Let’s make it one of playing to our strengths and rebound right into December in grand style!  It dawned on me today that I’ve had a tendency to spend more time dwelling on what I haven’t been 100% at than what I have…and yes, it is effecting me.  It is so easy to be our own worst critics – we learn judgment and criticism from a very young age and it is so very tempting to turn that on ourselves all day long.  Before you know it, all we are is overweight, underpaid, and very very underappreciated.  I know there was a time where that was all I could see – even though I knew stepping out for moments that there was so much more than that to see.

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Okay, so I find it highly ironic that I finally get this blog up and running and I awake this morning to discover that my laptop has been infected with some kind of completely debilitating virus!  It took an Act of Congress to clear my path for the success of this book, and now the cyber world is attempting to silence me once more!  Ha!  Little do those computer creeps know that it would take a lot more than that to shut me up…

Charge on!  Obstacles be gone!

Anyone that really knows me, knows that I am enthralled with a blank notebook.  Any notebook, any time.  My kids are very familiar with the “Let’s go buy notebooks!” impulse and now even get excited with me. As it turns out, 98 cents can still buy you a brand new world!

Well, let’s think about it a minute.  In a blank notebook you could plan a new business.  You could design a new home.  You could plan an itinerary for an exciting new trip.  You could create a new budget (okay, yes, that sounds less than exciting).  You could initiate a new fitness program or create a list of to-do’s that lead to the completion of a project.  There are so many possibilities!

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Begin with the end in mind!  I’ve probably hear that expression 15 times in the last week and when I woke up this morning, it was sitting on my heart.  I knew that if I allowed myself to glide through the day, overeating, overdrinking, and over-escaping I wouldn’t be able to feel this holiday as the day of gratitude that it truly has the potential of being.  It’s always easy for me to be grateful for what is good.  I can say honestly that there isn’t a day that goes by that I pause and recognize how grateful I am for my healthy family and for the love of friends and family around me.  What I’m often not so good at recognizing is gratitude for the things that are challenging me and helping me grow and be a better person. 

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I must say that one of the things that seems to be a recurring theme for me is the need for me to break through my own inertia on a daily, almost hour by hour basis.  Waiting for motivation never seems to be the answer – it is much much easier to find reasons NOT to do than to do, many days.  There is nothing like financial loss to make you feel less than confident, less than creative, less than…well, yes, just LESS, I guess.  And yet waiting for that to change, I know I could wait forever.  Action is the only thing that keeps allowing me to break through the veil of my own processing and at the same time facilitates it.

They say that only 3% of new businesses will make it through the first 3 years.  Despite those less-than-encouraging statistics, somehow I felt that I could rise above those odds.  3% do, after all!  I thought we had found a vehicle to carry us over the start-up threshold when we formed a strategic partnership with a 10-year old, supposedly stable company

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Well, yesterday marked yet the beginning of another new chapter – an opportunity to rebound and create a new perspective, a new life.  I opened this blog with a very short post just to demark the moment in time in which THIS chapter began, even though we didn’t have much time to get into the heart of the thing. We will, though, over the course of the next several days, months – who knows, maybe even years! – have a chance to chat about all.  In 2008, I lost a business – what of course is ironic is that starting the business was a new chapter as well, right?  This blog is a chance to explore those seasons of loss and gain, to discuss the realities of grieving and rebounding from those losses – whether they be divorces, bankruptcies, business losses.  I’ve experience all of those – the bankruptcy being the one I’m experiencing now – and I feel somehow it is imperative for not only myself, but for you, that I be as honest and transparent about what the emotions are that I’m experiencing and have experienced, how those emotions have translated into learning, and how I plan to rebound and move forward.

Who knows?  Maybe by sharing we could just get through this thing intact, alive, and better than ever!

Every day we are given a brand new beginning, and for me, perhaps more than most other days, I have a strong sense of the new chapter I am about to embark in creating.