I rescued two of my dogs, Jack & Webster, from a hoarding “rescue” in Anna, Illinois. I drove 3 hours to get them, paid their bail money to spring them from years of living in a tiny cage with no access to sun or grass, and I brought them back to Nashville where they’ve been living a life of dog luxury ever since.
Jack, the MinPin mix, adjusted to his new freedom pretty quickly.
Webster, on the other hand, was clearly the more emotionally damaged of the two. We’ve come a very long way from the days when I was afraid his tail would never wag. Still, Webster is my personal mindset project.
Webster likes to sit next to me when I’m sitting in my chair. He can totally make the jump, but we spend absurd amounts of minutes daily while he works up the nerve. He tries to jump and then chickens out. This happens over and over till he starts whining because he wants me to pick him up so he doesn’t have to do it himself.
And over and over again I say, “Webster, you already have everything you need to make the jump.” (Because dogs understand logical human language, right?)
The only reason Webster gets tripped up when jumping is because he doesn’t trust himself.
And I call Webster my personal mindset project because he continues to remind me we already have everything we need to make the jump. We just have to trust ourselves.
I was having a conversation with one of my favorite fellow entrepreneurial humans. We were talking about how easy it is to get caught up in thinking other people know better what we should do than we do ourselves.
Granted, it *would* be nice if we still had an option to raise our hand like we did in math class and ask for the answer. ‘Cause, seriously, all this soul-searching work is, well, work.
But now you’re the boss.
You’re the teacher.
You’re the one who actually creates the answer key.
And now it’s on you.
Recently, I was planning my very first Unhooked Life retreat. You cannot fathom how excited and honored I was that the some of the neatest women signed up to attend.
I’d planned out the content, the worksheets, the surprises…ALL of it. Flowers had been ordered, the caterer was in place and the cool stuff to happen was over-the-top. (If I do say so myself!)
Just before the retreat, I was forced to make the excruciating decision to postpone it (it’s now going to be September 16-17th, and I’d LOVE to have you.) While I very much know I made the right decision and I made it with full integrity honoring both my clients and my family, I still had to wrestle the mindset demons.
What will these women think?
Will they still trust me?
Did I just ruin my entire business?
Should I just sell everything and move to a deserted island with my soccer ball?
And after about 3 days of waffling between being sick to my stomach and crying (ok, WHY don’t we lose weight when we cry? Such an injustice…), I was trying to coax Webster up on the chair and I said, “Webster, you just have to decide you’re going to be okay.”
BAM.
It hit me a like a ton of bricks: Belinda, you have to decide your business is going to be okay.
And that was it. No more worrying. No more wondering. That was the answer.
I’m also honored that most of the women decided to keep working with me.
Kyle Matthews, one of the kindest and best songwriters I’ve ever met in Nashville, wrote a song several years ago called, “We Fall Down,” that I’ve been singing a lot lately.
Here is the lyric to the chorus:
We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
And the saints are just the sinners
Who fall down and get up
Yep.
We fall down, we get up.
And that’s what we do, Beautifuls. That’s also *how* we do this.
We fall down…and then we get up.
We big fat GET UP!
We get back to slaying the mindset demons, and we get on about the work we’re called to do.
Because we get to decide.
And, right now, if you’ve fallen down and need a little help getting back up, come hang out with me in my Unhooked Life Facebook group.
No warriors will be left behind on my watch.