Success alone is not my path.

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me,but now I am more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

Reading Love Does by Bob Goff right now and all I can say is….. Holy moly I thought I was good at loving folks and throwing my heart over the bar. But this fellow brings a whole NOTHA level to love because his whole life is NOT about love as a theory but love in full blown action. I realized after reading I have so much to do!!! But until I can put my whole love plan in action I wanted to share what popped in my heart and my head when I read his quote above.

I tend to throw myself full force into things and am not real good with medium or slow speed and sometimes that is grand and at other times I find myself in a position and wonder how I got here? If I have blogged about this in  the past, give me a break since I am 61 and not so good in the memory zone of life.  

When I was broke as a joke and trying to raise 3 kids on teacher pay, I was recruited by a friend to sell Mary Kay Makeup.  I knew nothing about it but I was attracted to the kindness and the positive nature of the company as well as the founder and leader Mary Kay Ash and besides I found out her fave number was 13 so it was fate and I was broke and hungry so I embarked on this endeavor. Whew that was a run on sentence!!! But I did not take a breath so there was not a place for a period.

I started in January, I earned a free car by March and was a director with 50 plus girls in my unit.  I turned and looked around and I was leading 50 plus women, teaching them how to run a business and I was still writing my notes on post-it notes and my receipts were on the back of gum wrappers and torn wallpaper scraps. In other words my organizational skills were non existent. But what I lacked in finesse and organization  I made up in enthusiasm and tenacity and again I was hungry.

I did discover that I loved leading people, I did enjoy being around positive women who were hungry to achieve and find a way to set their own compass. What I did not enjoy as I was on this trek were the makeup parties and the socializing etc.  This is for another day but I found out after much introspection that even though it may appear this way, I am not the big extrovert that people think I am. I do love leading and helping others find their passion and their why but big events of small talk were not for me. I wanted to be at home studying and writing and reading.

I learned so many valuable lessons while being in Mary Kay and I feel that my business acumen was birthed during this time. As part of my education for my unit,  I hired a life coach to come speak  and I perked up my heart as she talked about being authentic with your life.  I looked around at the room and looked into my heart and I realized that she was talking to me.  I went home and spoke to my sweet Hugh (seemingly my forever  boyfriend at the time) and told him my thoughts and the next week I was turning in my purple suit, my red car and my box of prizes.  

I was super successful and it was one of the most valuable times and learning periods of my life and I still fall back on the lessons learned but I knew it was not my path.  God had a bigger group for me to lead and I would not have to put makeup on women at parties. Thanks be to God.

Being a Mary Kay director allowed me to feed my kids, build my confidence, pay my water bills and more, learn about priorities, being a go-giver (topic for another day), setting audacious goals, loving people where they are and for who they are. The list of my gifts of this time is endless and it laid the foundation for the thankful business owner I am today but thankfully I realized that success alone is not the seed for a well-lived life.