It’s that time of year where we set good intentions, make resolutions, and are inundated by motivational quotes that push us to be our best selves.
New Year, New You! Rah Rah!
It’s also that time of year when we look back over the past year and measure our success against all the goals that we set for ourselves 364 days ago. Boy, did I fall wide of the mark!
But what if we didn’t need a new you, what if we need the true you?
I have spent countless years in the business of pushing motivation and inspiration. I love self-development. I read all the books, attended all the talks, wrote books and gave talks myself. I hired all the coaches and became a coach myself. This time of year is the cash cow in the business of change and I have cashed in over the years. But things changed for me this year. Drastically. From profit to non-profit.
Do you pick a word for your year?
I’ve done this for several years. I chose a word to focus on and keep top of mind throughout the year. In January of 2019, I attended a mastermind with brilliant businesswomen in a stunning house in Bradenton Beach Florida. I had finished 2018 with 6 figures in sales. My business was doing well and ready to scale even more. At the beach house, in the throws of the entrepreneurial fervor, I chose Profit as my word for the year. After all, I had all the tools, business knowledge, and the motivation to double my income in the next year. I was ready to rock!
Nose to the grindstone, I set to work. But my business was not my entire life. I was writing my book, and my literary agent and I were finalizing my book proposal. I was volunteering, and Airdrie Pride hosted our very first Pride Festival. I was a mom, and my third child was still transitioning. I was busy with everyday life in addition to building an empire. And then my world came to a screeching halt. The nursing home called to say that my dad, who lived across the country, wouldn’t make it through the night. On July 4, 2019, I lost all concept of the word profit.
True You
I thought I had done grief before when my mother passed unexpectantly. But this grief was completely different. This grief was sacred. It was my wake-up call. Not as much in the sense that death reminds us of our limited time, but more that I was losing pieces of me and what remained needed to be preserved. I needed to know who I truly was in order to preserve what connected me to my dad and my mom. I spent months walking my dog lost in thought, trying to figure out who I truly was in a world without my parents, in a world where I was the parent to a transgender child. The gift of that time was that the voice in my head became my voice, not the voice of my parents, not the voices of my business coaches or my therapists, not the self-help authors, not the famous people I quoted on memes. My voice spoke to me.
From Profit to Non-profit
My voice started asking some pretty deep questions. Big questions about every aspect of my life. Did I want to write my book? Did I want to be a volunteer with Airdrie Pride? Did I want to move back to Ontario? If money were no object, how would you change your life tomorrow? That last question I knew the answer to immediately. I would go to university and finish my degree. Luckily, that was something I could do with the money I did have. But that led to another question… what would I study? What did I want to be when I grew up at 48 years old? More walks with the dog, more time in deep thought with only my voice in my head and it came to me. Advocacy work in the non-profit sector.
That realization started the war in my head between my true self and my inner critic, of course. My inner critic invited the voices of all my coaches and therapists and my mom’s critical voice from my teen years to form a formidable itty-bitty-shitty-committee. How could I walk away from a successful business? How could I be so lazy and selfish? How could I add studying to my full plate? What are people going to say about you? So, I flogged myself with those stinging questions for a while. And then my true self asked a wise question: If you want to leave your business for a career as an advocate, you should know what it is about your business that you don’t like first so that you don’t repeat it.
More walks with the dog. More thinking. What was it? What was missing in my business? People. I was desperately lonely. I worked alone, and when I spoke with clients it was business focused. I had no water cooler moments. My business is also a business of privilege. I work with individuals who can afford my fees and have the time to spend on writing a book. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it’s a high contrast to volunteering with people who can’t get a job and use the food bank because they’re experiencing discrimination as a trans woman.
I had my answer. I enrolled in school.
I also started looking for a job in the non-profit sector. The reality was that what I disliked about my business was not going to go away by making more profit. My true self was longing for fulfillment and to be around likeminded people. On December 4, five months after my dad passed away, I signed a contract working three days a week as a communications assistant for a non-profit organization.
From Profit to Part-Time
I work part-time. I study part-time. I write my book part-time. I volunteer with Airdrie Pride part-time. And, I now run my business part-time. My drive is no longer profit, it is people—the people I help write their books and the people who will one day read them.
None of this came to me on December 31st… this was a process. A process of walking the dog and thinking, a process of listening to my own voice, and daring to be true to my own self.
I urge you, as this time of year starts pulling at you to be thinner and more profitable and a better mom and a better everything, to take the time to slow down and tune into what you need to feel fulfilled and not what your itty-bitty-shitty-committee says you should be focused on. Be true to YOU.
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