Preserving Our Past For The Future

new year

Today is the last day of 2014. It has been a year of ups and downs, gaining and losing , letting go and holding on. I am pleased with the way most of it has taken shape. It has been a good year.
This time last year I was letting go of a company I had poured my life and total focus into for over 12 years as a full time CEO. It was like sending a child on to their own life when I walked out that front door and locked it up for the last time. But it was the beginning of a new, exciting company and experience and I was…and still am…excited to embrace it as my new life plan.
In the last year I have uprooted offices and moved into a new facility as I melded my old life and new life into a brand new vocation. Somehow all the stars have aligned, and everything has been steadily moving forward. The Lord has been good and placed amazing people in my path, and pushed me into opportunities that could only be a part of a BIG plan, and I am pretty humbled when I think about it all. Every day as I drive to the shop, meet a client, go thrift shopping for inventory and work from home I am brought to tears in gratefulness for what my life is right now. I hope that dream and the fruitfulness I am experiencing right now inside and outside never ends.
I have rid myself of three toxic relationships in the last year. Two were tearing down my business life and one adversely affecting my personal life. I cannot imagine now, on this side of that cutting away, how I stayed sane and was able to operate as well as I did during the height of those three relationships. But the strength that came in character, business savvy and sheer tenacity is seen today in my dealings with people both in my personal and professional life. I have since rid myself completely of anyone new who didn’t fit into my best life plan almost as quickly as they tried to enter, and on more than one occasion. It is difficult at times, because people come to you showing their best face and on their impeccable behavior. You can’t always see them for who they are, or are not. I have met and begun an acquaintance with some this year that I would have drawn close to my heart or brought into my business very easily in the past. But when I placed them against the acid test I have developed with the three former toxic relationships, I could see immediately and with an unreal clarity that those newest acquaintances were not genuine, real, or destined to be a part of my life after all. I was able to let go before I held on, and that was an amazing feeling. Because of this stepping back and razor-edged conscious decision-making skill I have developed, the last year has been pretty drama free with the exception of a couple of clients and one incident involving some business acquaintances. In those situations I was able to shut down the drama in record time and before it splashed onto my own life. Wow, what a grand feeling of self-control. And what a freeing feeling of knowledge that this really is a repeatable skill. It will be one of the greatest skills I will ever land in my own portfolio as a business owner or private individual. Integrity is of great value to me and I have seen the truth in Ben Franklin’s quotation ”He that lieth down with dogs shall get up with fleas.” It is refreshing and exhilarating to go to work at a place I love, with people I care about and know I am doing a great job because we are a TEAM. Being equally yoked is the only way to make the progress I want in my company and life, and I love that this was shown to me through a deep hurt and large loss in many ways. Like a phoenix, I have risen and will continue to rise.
In getting rid of things that were not beneficial in 2014, I also lost weight…a lot of it. Year to date I am almost 50 pounds lighter than this time last year. It hasn’t been a major struggle either. I just got up one day in June of this year, said to myself “Ok, it’s time to get healthy and feel good again” and I began the journey of counting calories, adjusting my lifestyle and mindset and just started listening to my inner voices again when it came to my personal care. What they say about being able to accomplish big changes only when you are ready is absolutely right, and that’s pretty much what happened to me. I was ready, and I just did it.
I started that book (in earnest) I kept saying I was going to write one day. I had written things down randomly in the past but this is a concerted effort to get it on paper so to speak, recorded and publish ready. I want to inspire someone. I want to challenge others. I want to know myself. This is what this book is about and my goal is to get it published in the next 18 months. We will see if that all pans out. It may be even sooner, and that is ok by me. Check another thing off that old bucket list.
When I reflect during the last few hours of 2014, I am content with it. I have done most of what I intended, grown through it, and have even learned to anticipate goodness and fulfillment rather than feeling anxious and insecure all the time. I turn to look into the bright, young face of 2015 and smile because I can see it taking a running jump off the good things that happened in 2014 and making its own solid destiny as it pulls me along with it and creates my next steps in the right direction. It will be interesting to see what this year holds, but not half as interesting as seeing what I hold at the end of 2015. And the most interesting discovery will surely be when the page turns next New Year’s Eve and I find out what holds me.

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Today marks the first blog post of 2013. The year 2012 was filled with grandbabies’ births, highs and lows in my personal life and circumstances, and shifting trends in my company and… well…frankly, I am over-ready to start a brand new year. With all the rush of the holidays over and fuss and muss all but packed away and put in the attic, it is time to start thinking about what I want to accomplish and BE in the upcoming months. Opportunity to begin again happens to all of us, if we let it. But many times we cha-cha with the same old issues, the same old unrealistic dreams, and the same old people and problems going into a new year as we did in the old one. Many times the “same old” phrase refers more to ourselves and our view of life than to someone else…

It was last Friday, techs were out on their jobs for the day, and my operations manager called and had an issue arise at the office. No one likes to be terminated from a position, and even more so, no one likes to be the one terminating another person, especially at holiday time and with our country on the brink of a financial disaster dubbed “the fiscal cliff”. Months of inadequacy and complacency on an employee’s part had forced the company’s hand and a staff member was going to be terminated that day. Tension is always at a high level, but for the most part the person leaving employ is reasonable and sees the handwriting on the wall before the time comes for the “talk”, but this employee was unusual. She denied throughout all performance reviews that any issues were legitimate when she received complaints from our customers or during a quality check from the managers. She gave excuses for her behavior, she didn’t ask for help getting back to company standards, but instead tried to make those around her believe that THEY were wrong in their standards and assessment of her work. She faulted her training, she faulted her teammates, she faulted the stringency of the company procedures, she faulted everyone and anyone but herself. She was charming and would have been convincing in her quiet, disarming way if I had not had experience with others in my own life like this employee. Many are the times I have encountered a “dedicated convincer”. They have an issue or issues that are usually long term…so long term they have become a part of their personality to the point they no longer see them as issues. They have a way of soft-speaking about sad situations, relationships or moments that arose out of giving into their own issues. It makes you feel sorry for them at onset of your relationship with them, they convince you their issues are due to some (usually imagined or exaggerated) past injustice or ill treatment by another in their life prior to you finding them, and you are encouraged to become their “savior”. Invariably you do find yourself becoming harsh or too judgmental in your assessment of a situation and their participation in it if the issues come to light or start to affect you and your own life and good choices. Then you find you are “convinced” you are the bad guy or the problem is really not theirs, but yours. You begin to second guess yourself in your decisions and ultimately in the conversations or interaction with this person or group of people. You become your own bad guy as you take up the mantle of victim and someone’s perception becomes your own reality.

Friday was the job position crossroads with the employee and she had not liked the conversation she had had with the manager about her work and the terms of her termination.  The employee had also chosen to bring her boyfriend with her to the meeting in an effort to have someone as her support person. The boyfriend was not allowed into the meeting which miffed him. He then found out when the employee refused to sign termination papers she would not receive a check that day, and he boldly stepped in as her support back up. After much yelling and making a spectacle outside the office window, finally the manager called me, and I headed to the office myself instructing her to call the police to meet me there to take care of and diffuse the situation.

On the 4 minute drive from my home to the office I was fuming. I had been working from home and was neck high in paperwork and so forth and this was taking me away from my own schedule. It also was wasting salaried time my manager should have been using for her own job, and instead everyone’s day was being eaten up by the ridiculous. Both the manager and I knew what the situation was and it was an exercise in futility for the employee to try and convince us that we were wrong, and even more a kangaroo court to think someone not involved with the company could shed any light on our ignorance. Her foolish choice of a support person cost her having to deal with police officers, she still had to comply with company policy to receive her paycheck, and it created unneeded stress and tension in her relationship with the boyfriend.

When I relayed a bit of the story on my Facebook page later, I told how the police came, we were calm and explained what went on, we didn’t challenge the accusers before, during or after the police were there and we got all our paperwork signed and the employee exited as we needed without incident. One of my cousins commented on how often the police encounter erratic and irrational behavior not only out of the employee in this type situation, but that the employer becomes emboldened with the police’s arrival and gets into the fray verbally and just makes the whole thing a bigger mess than it ever needed to be, rather than giving what my cousin called “wise support”.

I have thought of this term so many times since last Friday, and I have come to some pretty interesting and a bit painful conclusions about myself, my own life path to this point and the object of my “blame game” I play in my own relationships, whether at work, play or with my own family and friends.  Do I blame the twists and turns of my own road in life, and the choices and consequences that perhaps I am still recovering from today, on those who did me some perceived great injustice? But…I have to be the way I am, or think the way I do, don’t I? They caused it, they trained me this way, they tried to change me, gave up on me, were hard on me, expected too much from me, abused me, abandoned me…the list goes on…you get it, right? Had I become my own “dedicated convincer”?

There is an old saying “They say is often proved a great liar”. Why is that so easy to state, but so hard to live when we have voices in our past whispering “You are not good enough”…”You will never live up to”….”You can’t quit, you are weak”…”You can’t start a new life, the old life is too strong”…”You are stupid”…”You are fat”….”You won’t succeed”…”You will never amount to anything”. Is it because we choose to be an instrument of validation now for the harm or insensitivity we have suffered then?

I am not one to make resolutions, but this year I am breaking tradition and making one and only one resolution. I am crucifying the old voices of the past, and I am laying down my position of “dedicated convincer” in my own life. I am simply choosing from this day forward to tell myself the truth about me. I have choices…I may not have had some good options given to me in the past by another “dedicated convincer” in my life, and sometimes I made some poor decisions based on faulty or insufficient training, but they were still MY choices.  And difficult as it is to utter, in every instance I made my own poorest choices with some measure of stupidity and rash judgment that I tethered to one belief…someone else was to blame for my foolishness, issues and inability to change my own life path. I followed the convincer, rather than choosing to make a break with soft-speaking voices of untruth about me. Even when there was truth and it was unlovely, I allowed it to grow and gain strength, become a part of my personality and many times morph into an issue or event that became my undoing for years after it should have been forgotten or stood against. Instead, I choose to archive 1960 through 2012 as “the past”, and I refuse to go back there other than to gather a lesson here and there. I also refuse to take anything into my life here forward except those ideals, people and things  that will pave a good path for me. This part of my life…2013 forward… will be different than the former part of my life. This time I will not walk it alone….I choose to walk it in the truthful company of my own “wise support”.

Today is my first blog post for 2012. Rushing through twinkling lights, gift wrappings and farewell toasts, the end of 2011 leaped into a brand New Year. So it is traditionally time to reflect on the old and ponder the new, right? The resolutions flow freely, diets and new company programs are jump started and frenzied activity seems to take up right where it left off with no real line drawn between the two years at all. As I have gone over the last year in my mind this morning, it is amazing to reflect upon where I find myself both professionally and personally.

We found out yesterday that Samantha, my daughter, is having twin BOYS! Wow…we have no clue what to do with the male species in our family. My mom had my sister and me, my sister had a daughter, I had a daughter, my daughter had Lorelai who is now going to be a big sister to snip-snail-puppy dog- tail boys. Everything has always been Princess Pink, tea parties on tiny toadstools, and fluffiness in our family. This will be a totally new adventure, but should be “interesting” to say the least.

In January 2011, I had a full staff and big visions for our staff and company. But in May…something changed. There was a great wave of staff turnover that began due to a variety of events…some needed to leave for family and personal reasons, some moved, some found themselves pregnant (!) and others were encouraged to leave because their performance was less than the stellar performance I promise my customers, or we realized they were not apt to embrace the awesome company culture we were dedicated to growing. Now in January 2012 we have had a complete staff turnover, but somehow I feel more at peace with the company and our current tiny staff and what we provide today than I have for many months. Changes that were pretty much out of my control when staff left resulted in an unexpected but refreshing purge of old attitudes and mindsets and made way for clearer thinking in myself and my current staff. It’s kind of like hanging onto a relationship that you know is bad for you and you cannot grow in…but you hang on and try and make it work because of your investment of time and self, and because it is all you know. But then you have to be away from the relationship for a while due to traveling with a job or visiting relatives and suddenly you find yourself saying “This is not working for me anymore, and that’s ok…and it’s ok to change”. Sometimes you have to step back…or be forced to step back…to find your real path and gather those who will walk with you, rather than pulling you toward their path.You may lose a meaningful someone just as I lost many of my staff. You may lose others watching from the outside that become experts on your relationship and are saying you need to try to find something you should have “done” or “become”  to explain your current state of affairs. Our company lost customers during this transition of staff coming and going, and it was not unexpected at all, although it has been quite a challenge. But in losing some, I have realized not all customers and not all staff are meant for our company….and that’s ok for all concerned. We don’t desire just any customer or just any staff…we want something more…we want extraordinary. We want those who walk this good path the Lord has given us, with us, not against His flow and His vision for our company.

And this brings me to today and accepting and embracing the fresh breeze blowing through my life now….

I have a general idea of my path today. I know where I am to live, I know who I am to love and spend time with, I know I am to grow in personal areas as a grandmother, mom, daughter and wife. I believe part of my professional path is to begin coaching cleaning business owners who want to strike out on this journey of service provider. Who better than someone who has been in dark and difficult places and then burst through to the other side?

But the most real and true thing I know about my path is that it is to be all about gathering bits of extraordinary. The year 2012 for me will be about sitting on my deck with a cup of tea and watching the birds eat from my feeders….. because I had the ability and time to offer something extraordinary to those who needed something I had to give.  It will be about stopping to bury my nose in the downy softness at the back of our new babies’ necks…and giving others permission to stop and just breathe in and enjoy the extraordinary opportunities and gifts of hard work, unending love, and a contented life. It will be about walking the block with my granddaughter picking up stones, shards of colored glass and leaves and pasting it into a magnificent picture…all fragments found along our path but becoming an extraordinarily beautiful work of art.

And I have every reason and hope to believe when 2013 arrives, I will reflect on 2012 as a year filled with bits of extraordinary. I vow to show up for my own life, where maybe I have not been in such good attendance in the past…and I hope you will show up, and begin your gathering, too.