Me against the World. Read me if you think all is lost.
Today I feel exhausted and alone. The business is facing many challenges. Cash flow is low and a series of family emergencies have left it difficult for me to put business in as usual.
The thoughts I have are of having to draw on my retirement savings to pay the business expenses. The thoughts are of how I have to do everything myself as I am working with staff that are less than committed and less than skilled. The thoughts are of self-doubt — maybe I cannot do what I want to do. Perhaps I was deluding myself. I assumed I had a team. And within this month, my team imploded and I am left holding opened projects with no one to continue. I must be a terrible boss, I must be uninspiring to work for, I must be so stupid to trust the people I have mentored, coached, groomed. They just left me or leave me hanging dangerously. They don’t care enough or simply don’t care. They are filled with their own concerns and no one is really pulling their full weight for the business. The business and the staff and the associates; a sham. That’s how I feel at this moment. Ridiculed, dejected, humiliated, dispirited.
I have failed.
My business is a sham.
My Ten years of business– just luck.
I am not a good entrepreneur.
In anywhere in your world… have you felt this way? You with me?
And of all the four above statements, only the last sentence is true. I am not a good entrepreneur. I am a survivor. And so are you.
I spent the last night, after I found how my team member failed on a major assignment, in an emotional funk. The black cloud of anger, disappointment with her, disappointment with myself, stupidity, loss engulfed me. I woke up this morning not wanting to meditate. All I could see is the failure of me and my team and the company. All the catastrophes in one. I didn’t want to close my eyes because all I felt inside was pain and anger and every black thought I did not want to have.
But I am a survivor. So I pick myself up. Bit by bit. I could spiral more into the negativity and darkness and disillusion. However, what am I doing instead? I am here writing and facing the pain. I had tried to run away from it with chocolates, Netflix overdose, by wanting to call a friend and bad mouthing my team rather than my part in the issue. I tried and as I tried I knew I was simply holding myself in the muddy shitty pain of ‘woe is me’ and that’s not what a survivor does. A survivor is not a thriver. Sorry all those in the happy happy positivity world. This post is not for you. A survivor is not a thriver. A survivor picks themselves up bit by bit by bit by bit, even when they don’t feel like it and especially when the future seems bleak and only bleak. Please get out of my way, all those who want to tell me the ‘Sun will come up tomorrow”. It rained here this morning. No sun. for now and for some time to come. Just darkness, and greyness and for a survivor, I will simply get by and guess what. That is what will keep me here as an entrepreneur tomorrow and next week and next year. I am a survivor. And so are you.
Strangely enough, I shine my brightest when I am knocked down. Kick me out of a university, I come back as a Woman Icon and Entrepreneur; give me an alcoholic and emotionally abusive father, I grow up with an uncanny sense to read and heal people including myself; send me to a foreign land with little or no resources, I find a way to live. I amaze myself with my survival and to be honest, that is true success. A sense of well being despite the challenges the world throws at me. Underneath it all, great business women or just a little girl playing at business, I, Marion, am well. You are well.
Bit by bit
And in many circumstances, we entrepreneurs succeed simply by being the last one standing.
If you feel like throwing in the towel on your relationship, your business, your family or your life. Remember — this too shall pass. Stay in the darkness. For just that bit longer. I see the survivor in you. I see it because I know your brilliance underneath all that muck that life tends to throw at us.
Today. Survive.
Tomorrow. Survive
Next Week. Survive
Next Month. Survive
And in those lovely insightful beautiful grateful moments in between. I promise you — a rainbow, a miracle, a knight or lady in shinning armor who will sweep down and you will more than survive. You will thrive or at least smile again. And your survival — is the celebration of life. The true success.
