Tag: Perseverance

I’ve always been someone who can see every side of a situation.  Maybe it’s the Gemini in me, maybe it’s because I grew up with two parents who came at situations from different sides, or maybe I’m just wired this way.  Either way, it’s served me well. 

As a mental health professional, as a business and life coach, and as a leader–this ability to see an issue from every possible angle has been crucial to my work.  No matter the situation, I can feel empathy and see possibilities. 

Of course, every strength has a shadow side–I can struggle with decision making because I see how any direction I turn there’s a possible solution.  

Many of you know by now that I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.

Throughout the process of diagnosis, surgery and treatment planning, I’ve noticed myself holding two seemingly opposite truths at the same time. 

I have this thing I do with my hands to remind myself that two things can be true at the same time.  I hold my arms out straight in front of me, my hands in fists, and I hold steady–reminding myself that it is ok to believe both truths at the same time.  That in fact, it’s one of those strange paradoxes of life. There are multiple (different) truths in any given situation. 

Here are the 2 truths that keep coming up for me:

I am in deep grief.  

I’m grieving my physical body never looking the same ever again.  

I’m grieving the loss of my health innocence.  I now know deep in my bones that so much of our health and our longevity is out of our control. I’m not saying there’s nothing we can do for our health; however, I also know that sometimes the spinning wheel arrow just lands on you no matter what you’ve done to try and control it.  

I’m grieving the loss of my youth.  I don’t mean getting wrinkles and gray hair.  I mean this process is aging me and due to having a hormone receptive cancer, I will be put into menopause well before what’s “typical”.

I’m grieving the loss of the self I knew. Cancer is now a part of my story and that will never go away.  Some things will never be the same as they were BC (before cancer) and that makes me so sad.

I could keep going–there are so many losses, so many things to mourn. Yet that is not the entire story, so let’s move on to the next truth…

I am in deep gratitude.  

I’m grateful for being grounded in steadiness, positivity and clarity. This isn’t toxic positivity, I assure you–the grief is there and it’s real. Yet as deep as I feel that grief down to my bones, I feel gratitude just as deeply. In some ways I’m realizing I’ve been preparing for this moment my entire life. This community I’ve built, the resilience I’ve had to cultivate, the deep sense of self I own–it’s what holding me steady and allowing me to feel positive and hopeful in the midst of so much uncertainty.  

I’m grateful for my family and my community.  The writer Anne Lamont says the three essential prayers are help, thanks and wow. I’m feeling that so deeply right now. My people have shown up for me in ways I never imagined. I am deeply loved and supported and that has never been more evident than this moment in time.  

I’m grateful for my intellect and resourcefulness.  This process is tricky and frustrating at times and frankly pretty difficult to navigate. I cannot imagine how hard it would be for someone without the resources I have.  

I’m grateful for the life and business I’ve set up for myself that’s allowing me to take the time off I need in order to move through this process.

I’m grateful for having every creature comfort imaginable to make this as comfortable and endurable as possible.  

I could go on–there are too many gratitudes to count. And what a wonderful, beautiful thing. 

Here’s what I hope you walk away with after reading this–We don’t have to BE just one thing or FEEL  just one thing.  We can be and feel lots of different things all at the same time.  One doesn’t diminish the other.  

Over the next many months, you may see me on a day that I can only access deep grief or on a day where deep gratitude is at the forefront–and that’s okay.  I believe in giving ourselves the grace to be more than one thing even when one threatens to take us over.  That moment will pass (it always does), and both things will become more accessible again. 

My truth in this journey is that grief and gratitude are always there, and they’re both necessary to support me in moving forward.

My 6-year old brought home library books from school last Thursday, like she does every Thursday. It’s always fascinating to see her choices–she’s super into science and the natural world, so there’s usually one related to that.

Last week one of her books was about sea creatures. And let me tell you, in case you don’t know–there are some really, really weird sea creatures out there. 

But the most familiar one to me was the hermit crab. Though I know some hermit crab facts, reading about them hit me in a different way this time. 

Hermit crabs are not actually hermits, they’re communal creatures.  In the wild, they’re found in groups of 100 or more.  And though they’re known for their shells, they don’t actually make their own–they forage for the homes they carry on their backs, and they’re known to be quite particular about which shell they choose.

So when a hermit crab grows larger, the old shell it’s been living in starts to get uncomfortable. There’s not enough room for this version of the crab, and it starts to look around for the right new home–one that’s large enough with room to grow, but not so big that it doesn’t fit. The old shell is given up to the community, where it will fit a smaller crab that also needs a new home.

And so it goes, this process of growing bigger, getting uncomfortable, and shedding the old to make room for the newer, more evolved version. 

What if the crab got stuck? What if it was so afraid of leaving what was familiar that it stayed smaller, dealt with the pain of the known to avoid the risks of the unknown, the risks of expanding and demanding more space? 

That’s a very human thing to think, and luckily hermit crabs–though quite smart–just don’t think that way. So they live their crabby lives, doing the next right thing and taking up the space they need.

We humans, however, are notorious for getting in our own way.

Are there ways that you’ve grown larger, and the old life just doesn’t fit anymore? Are you feeling constricted, but you’re afraid of change? Is there room in your current “shell” for a more evolved, expansive you? And most importantly…will you let yourself look for and accept what you need?

Be the hermit crab, my friends.

♥️, 

Amy

I was 18 years old when I got my first credit card. A company set up tables on our college campus and gave away free t-shirts to anyone who applied for a card. I’ve always loved a free…well, anything…so of course I applied. Within a week, a shiny new card arrived in my mailbox with a $500 limit. 

Of course, I didn’t register a “limit”…all I saw was FREE MONEY.

I was a poor kid from middle of nowhere Alabama, and at that point in my life $500 might as well have been $100,000. 

It was a fluke that I even ended up going to college–no one in my family did. I can’t remember what I thought I would do after graduating high school (maybe continue waitressing at JR’s Wings and Things?), but what I CAN tell you is that I went into utter shock when I got a letter in the mail offering me a full scholarship to my university.

My test scores apparently put me in a range where some schools were offering me money to come there before I even applied. Which was a good thing–because I didn’t know the first thing about applying to college!

And this, my friends, is how I accidentally ended up going to college AND how I ended up in major credit card debt before I hit the age of 21.

No one in my family talked about money, unless it was about not having any. My brother and I used to joke that our family motto is “Expect the worst, and don’t you dare hope for the best.”

The first part of my childhood was spent in a single wide trailer, then later in a small home on a piece of my grandparent’s land. We struggled, to say the least. 

I had no clue–ZERO idea–how to handle money, and this landed me in a world of trouble several times before I finally taught myself to manage money in responsible ways.

I not only completed that four-year degree, I went on to receive a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. Once I moved away from Alabama and began working in the professional world, I dug myself out of the hole I was in through sheer will and a determination to learn as much as I possibly could about debt, savings and investing. I read every personal finance book I could get my hands on. 

And still, STILL, I made major mistakes. I was in a cycle of accruing debt, paying it off, and doing it all over again.

I could have read every personal finance book in the world, but until I dealt with my emotional spending, the psychology of money and the beliefs that were handed down to me from my own family of origin–I was doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m PASSIONATE about money, for one reason and one reason only–MONEY BUYS FREEDOM.

Money is just a tool–and like any tool, it can be used to build something sturdy and secure, or it can be used to destroy.

Having money–for me–isn’t about accumulating stuff, or taking big fancy trips. It’s about the freedom of CHOICE, the ability to make the most important decisions in my life based on my own best interests rather than fear and scarcity. And it’s about having the ability to be generous with others, taking care of my community. 

I’ve spent much of my adult life yo-yoing between extreme deprivation and reckless spending. I am so incredibly thankful that I did the work I did to find more balance in my financial life, to make money a useful tool that works FOR me and not AGAINST me.

If I can support you in creating a healthier relationship with money, it’s my favorite thing to so…so please reach out!

–Amy

Before there was Tina Turner, there was Anna Mae Bullock, a girl born to share-cropper parents in 1939. Her parents abandoned her and her sister at a young age, leaving them with their strict conservative grandmother.

Tina has shared many times that she never felt loved by her parents. It was with this difficult childhood history that she met and fell in love with Ike Turner, a talented and charismatic musician. She married him at the age of 22 and for years endured horrific physical, emotional and financial abuse. Their success in the music world belied the terror behind closed doors. 

When Tina finally left Ike, she did so with just 36 cents to her name. She worked any job she could find and lived in poverty, forced to start her music career all over again.

Tina performed whenever and wherever she could. Music was her passion, the one thing she loved that ever loved her back, the one thing that gave as much as it took. Though she struggled to get anyone to take her seriously without Ike by her side, she never gave up. 

And finally, in 1983, she signed with Capitol Records. 

Tina catapulted to a kind of fame she never had with Ike, had never dreamed of having before.  All those years of never giving up and following her passion had paid off.

In 1985 Tina found real love with a man named Erwin Bach. They’ve been together for over three decades now. It seems no coincidence that finding love with a partner coincided with loving herself enough to save her own life.

Tina is quoted as saying “My legacy is that I stayed on course…from the beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me.”   

How beautiful is that?  She didn’t say “my legacy is my music” or “my legacy is my talent.” Her legacy is that she never deviated from what she loved the most, and she was able to do that because she believed in herself against all odds.

People could control her, abuse her, abandon her and manipulate her–but she would not allow them to destroy her belief in herself and her drive to pursue her passion.

This is what ultimately got her out of that horrific marriage and allowed her to become the woman and artist she knew she could be.

Passion is defined as ‘powerful and compelling emotion.’ It’s the kind of strong and sustained feeling that just can’t be ignored.

Passion doesn’t necessarily correlate with money, or fame, or a career. It can involve those things, sure…yet it often doesn’t.

You might be most passionate about raising your children, or volunteering with animals. Maybe you live for horse riding, and your day job–though enjoyable–is more about funding that passion than anything else.

Passion may not directly make you money (or maybe it does)–but what passion DOES give to us is inspiration, meaning and motivation. In that way, passion feeds all the parts of our lives, including our businesses. Passion makes the hard parts more tolerable and the good parts more joyful.

Take a minute and consider what you’re most passionate about. What lights you up? What brings you the most joy and satisfaction in your life? What is the one thing you would continue to do against any odds? 

If you’re here on this earth, with a capacity to think and feel and act, then you’re passionate about something.  Perhaps you’re struggling to know what it is, or how to put it into words.  But trust us, it’s there 🙂

My 5 year old daughter is at an incredible school and we feel so lucky–we literally won the lottery to get her in there. 

One of the things about her class and school that I’m especially loving right now is their focus on perseverance. 

Maybe this is most kids (I have no clue, since I only have the one), but Z has a tendency to give up right away if she doesn’t do it well the first time trying. I mean, where does she get that from?? It’s not like I’m a recovering perfectionist 👀 😬

Anyway, we have been watching this trait shift so much from being in this class: she’s gone from a child who avoids failure to a child who’s willing to try harder and more consistently. We’re watching her develop some frustration tolerance.

Last night I was watching her practice writing her letters on a whiteboard in her room, and I remembered this story from Stephen King’s memoir On Writing…

Before Stephen King made it in the writing world, he and his family had very little money. They lived in a trailer with their young children and worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. King would work all day, come home and help take care of the kids, and then write well into the night.  At this point, he had already racked up numerous rejections–in fact, he received 60 rejections before he ever got his first short story published! 

King was working on a novel but had little hope that it would be published. At one point he threw the pages of the manuscript in the trash–luckily his wife Tabitha fished them out, read the pages and urged King to go on with the story.  She saw something in those pages and knew he needed to see it through.

And so in spite of his serious doubts (and his exhaustion!), King finished the novel and submitted it to Doubleday. 

One month later, Doubleday decided to purchase the novel. They had to send King a telegram because he couldn’t afford to keep up with the phone payment!

The advance amount wasn’t life changing–King kept his job–but it was enough to take a little pressure off financially. He hoped the paperback rights would sell for enough to quit his job and keep the household going for a few years, if they were very, very frugal.

When those paperback rights sold, they sold for $200,000–nearly 2 million dollars in today’s money 🤯

And that, my friends, is the story of Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel. This novel set him up on the path to becoming a successful and wealthy novelist.  And all of this from some discarded pages in the trash can and a supportive partner who saw what he could not 🌟 

When I think about my daughter and this Stephen King story, two things stand out to me:

1. Perseverance is a character trait that can be learned with willingness and practice.
   It’s one of the most crucial traits in long-term, SUSTAINABLE success. It’s not enough to believe in what you’re doing–you have to find a way to persevere when it feels like all you’re doing is running into obstacles.
   
2. We need other people to believe in us when we’re struggling to believe in ourselves.
   We need honest feedback and support from people we trust if we’re going to make it to the next level. We don’t need cheerleaders or “yes” people–we need RADICAL honesty, we need to be challenged, AND we need the right kind of support!  

How do YOU deal with frustration and lack of motivation? How do you keep going when you’re exhausted and ready to quit?  And WHO in your life gives you that radical honesty and support?

Amy Worthy
COO and High Performance Business Coach