What do you do to celebrate your marriage? Yourself if you’re not married? What makes life special for you?

For us its simple down time together. We’ll garden, declutter, I’ll cook a few special meals, we’re more likely to dance in the kitchen on the way to finishing dinner preparations and there might be a surprise treat or three while they are gone and we can focus more on our relationship.

Blended family visitations are important…and they don’t have to be devastation…they can simply allow for a different kind of week….and experiences for all of us.

What is ego?  It’s the level of self awareness that keeps one from learning. A person who has a large ego has a need to be right, to be in charge, and often they are not teachable.  (my most concerning trait when a new business client comes for help)  You see, if your business or project is not working there is a reason. Learning and correcting the behaviors that are causing it not to work matter.

Recently there has been a virus like rash of over pricing among service providers online. Specifically I’ve worked with two types of service providers who are struggling to achieve the level of income their skills and talents can provide for their business.  As we went through the paces of skills, packages, and hourly fees charged I kept hearing “I’m worth $$-$$$ per hour.” as the testimony of the pricing.  Personally I think the person is worth $$$$$$$$ more than that, but the skill set he is providing isn’t.  If the area you are in is offering a skill set that is professionally trained, works within a timeline the customer sets, produces effective, efficient work delivered on time for $18 an hour, its going to be VERY difficult for you as a solopreneur or virtual assistant to charge $55 to $75 per hour for that same skill set.

Ego often leads to ignorant alignments of outcomes.

One such client recently told me he would not work for less than $80 per hour. His skills were professionally average, his background and experience not exceptional, his personal habits professionally were not terribly polished. He didn’t offer extensive extras or specific niche talents. He also couldn’t pay his mortgage.

The kicker?

He turned down $35 per hour work consistently.  That same week, had he worked $35.00 per 20 hours, the $700.00 he made that week would have paid all of his base bills and the following week he could have paid his mortgage and had money left ofter, by week 4 he’d be able to meet his less than $1700 a month need.

Ego is expensive, in the current state of the union, he was willing to lose his home, his vehicle, and his relationships with family  because he felt by accepting less than $80 an hour he was “not worthwhile.”  Worthwhile in my book has a good more to deal with being a person of integrity than how much you charge for services.  There is nothing in the world wrong with making a living at the rate your skills are paid in your area. If you don’t like the rate skills you own are being re-numerated, learn more advance skills or offer more personally responsible tasks in the offering.

Example:  I often work as a ghost writer.  While my writing might make $.50 to $2.50  per word when I write for a publication as myself, when I write as one of the on-going authorities I ghost write for, my words become theirs permanently, my writing is tested to make sure it is not accidentally plagiarizing phrases, and phrases I create may be considered intellectual property phrases that are trademarked to the author I write with or for. Those differences make my ghost writing worth $4-14 per word or a fee plus percentage of profits from the materials created with those words.  It is my choice to have developed those opportunities when I sought to make more money from writing.

Other ways to up your anty is to offer specialty supports:  work hours when others don’t, be willing to take “on call” situations, be willing to provide for your businesses a service that no one else enjoys doing or remembers to do, protect their businesses by knowing what hurts them. Be willing to go in at a lower price to give a client a truthful taste of what you are capable of doing professionally. Your ability to work with their team matters. Your ability to keep deadlines and communicate goals as you go matter. Your ability to be a person of your word matters.  Your ability to offer flexibility to other small businesses to meet their needs seasonally or to go up and down in offerings as their need for outside assistance is required matters.  During tax season, a CPA may need 24/7 website supervision and support and daily updates, however in August twice a month check ins may be enough. Learn what your clients need or desire from you. Ask the client, “how can I serve you best?”  and listen! Too often I hear the question asked but then the person is so busy talking the client doesn’t get a chance to answer.

If your goal as an entrepreneur is to create client relationships for the serves or products you offer, take time to shelf your ego and do the work of finding out what your skill set is worth in your area, online, and how much it is charged for on places such as O Desk. Find out the advantages and disadvantages of each. Craft your offers and price points to support a price that will not only be able to be supported when clients shop around, but once they experience your truthful taste of your services, you’ll be the entrepreneur of choice!

In my journey I see mothering that looks like choosing to love others even if there is rarely a known return on the investment.  Children come into my life as children or as adults who have child like hearts seeking self love and approval. Young mothers need help understanding how to mother.  Students and clients seek mothering as they step out into strange new worlds of entrepreneurship.  Step mothers often take on the roles of their children’s natural mom and choose to be present when others cannot be.  Foster care, neighbors and friends reach out to hearts near them, often when who they reach out to may not particularly appreciate the care and safety they offer. Mentors and educators often go well past their requirements to support young minds and hearts as they grow.

Mothering is to me, the choice to look into the hearts and lives of individuals and to love them as they are, and to be willing, when then are ready, to help them grow. I am thankful that God has placed so many mothers in my life, and gives me so many opportunities to love others as well!

During the early part of the year I worked with Allyson Lewis’s The 7 Minute Solution launch. Her book focuses on how to have a more meaningful life through focusing daily on five things before eleven a.m. and systems of time management that can help you protect and engage in a more meaningful life.  I believe in the work of that book and I diligently used Allyson’s planner for the first quarter of 2012.  I had to get tickled at its simple lines for the hours of work, for my life appointments would take 4x as many spaces to keep up with what I do in a day.

That was a clue.

When the going gets tough on my time schedule, I am the first one to suffer, nurturing my family is second ball I drop, and if life gets hard enough on one project, my other clients may have less immediate access to me for a day or three.  The going was getting tough too many weeks in a row oh say since 2009.

The reality?

It wasn’t even about business or financial success.  It was about being enough.

Despite degrees, experience, awards and accolades, a happy marriage and children who are approaching adulthood without destruction, I was still in some sort of climb to find some unknown, un-named accomplishment that would make up for my inadequacies….all of them.

Margins against the less than glamorous parts of my humanity….like being twice divorced….or not being Barbie physically…or  or   or…

This year of seeking more meaningful life and daily peace has led me to refocus what it is that matters about what I do and why I do it…it’s will be most likely a lifetime quest. It’s hard to look into your life and not like what you see repeating, but in the honesty of that moment change can occur…and while it is not always permanent, new habits have to be learned, choosing to change and acting on it can happen in a instant…what a gift that is, that we can choose to learn, to change, to be and act differently….and start becoming the person we hope to be.

The gift of walking through fire as my husband likes to explain it is the knowledge that while friends, clients, or family may step away, God is steadfast and ever present.  We were blessed that what seemed to be very life changing news was not as first perceived, but the gift of the experience remains.  Each of us have but this one life. What will it take for each of us to realize that if we’re not living the way we seek to finish, as if this is our last day, what/who/when will we seek to change it? The answer is always of course, ourselves. We are the only ones who can choose our lives ultimately, we cannot count or lean on others for our faith, our walk, and our choices.

This Monday, after many of the storms of the last few weeks, I am thankful that our family is healthy, our lives affirmed, our marriage solid. I am ever grateful for a husband whom together I can face whatever  life may bring us and a God who loves us both!

The common theme all clients and our own home face is finding enough.

You cannot live where you haven’t found home.  Perhaps success to you is gathering for dinner those you love, having enough money in the bank to choose the food you eat without thought, or a certain number in savings.  Life has a funny way of trying to tell you that where ever you are, it is not there yet, that you are not enough.

I beg to differ.

The source of many individuals’ unhappiness is that they are striving for an unknown end. “Enough.”  Les and I have faced this giant and we have refaced it several times.  You see, for us, enough has a definition now.  It is based in knowing that the only day you can truly count on is the one you are living this moment.  Enough is what is before you in the next few hours before you sleep…without borrowing the issues of tomorrow and next year or decade.  Pragmatically we’re into being good stewards of our resources, but tomorrow is tomorrow, and cannot take over today’s significance in our lives.

Finding enough is very personal.  What comforts and gives my soul peace may not be what you were built to know or do.  God may have instilled within your heart a very different purpose and therefore a very different “enough.”  My enoughs involve a personal peace with my surroundings and relationships, it involves knowing and acting as though people are more important than things.  It means that money is a tool, not proof of importance or significance. It means that at the end of the day I’d prefer people over things.  Finding enough is a journey each heart mst take for itself.  It cannot be defined for you. You must find it on your own.

What are the moments you have found enough?  A few of mine are the moments I hold a child close as they sleep in my arms. Choosing to be fully present at a friend’s time of need, such as when their parent dies and someone is needed to simply clean the kitchen and be present.  To know that a need was met for a family struggling, when pizza was a glorious meal for date night at home so someone else could eat in theirs. It’s knowing that taking the time for kindness is never wasted.

What are your “enoughs?”Have you thought of your world in that way lately?

Which person are you in the lives of others?

Learning is a natural part of who we are.  Some of us tell ourselves that we cannot learn this or that, we become convinced by our own words and experiences that this or that is easier to learn or we’re just not good at something else.  As an educator I am more likely to say “bah humbug” to those statements.  Learning to learn is simply that. We all must figure out how it is that we acquire new knowledge and skills sets best.  Personally if you give me a verbal set of directions, you can pretty much be assured I’ll be coming round the mountain multiple times and I may even think the scenery is new the first five times.  Meanwhile, if I read or write the same directives when given, I’ll most likely only round that mountain two times and I’ll get it on the third. We all have modalities of learning that we learn more easily through, do you know yours?

If you have to tell me the directions every time I need to go somewhere, will it not be a long life if I don’t learn to do it myself independently after a trip or two?  As the saying goes, doing such a thing will not only annoy the bear you’re trying to teach to dance, but the bear may not only be annoyed, you’ll be annoyed with the bear. All of us appreciate assistance, but none of us prefer to have to assist when the person being helped/taught/enabled  has the ability to do for themselves what they seek others to do for them. In the country where I am from, not handling responsibilities of your own is called laziness or disrespectful behavior. Sometimes its manipulative, other times its simply poor habits that folks have taught themselves, that repeat often in their lives under a bigger theme of lessons unlearned like how to live in integrity.

We all prefer to engage people who “get” the learning regardless of the area of life. We all prefer to work with others who value and respect our time, efforts, assets and their own.

Have you considered stopping the sharing, telling, teaching, and training of your friend/client/child and look past where you are with them. What are you consistently doing over and over again with them?  What mountain are they rounding as though lost, or unaware that there is a way out of it? Is it over spending? Is it lack of preparation for an event? Is it anger management? is it personal/professional skills in speaking? When we identify what skill or experience is missing we can more likely empower someone to identify or become aware of the learning needed and take appropriate steps.

In the classroom, an effective instructor pre qualifies where the lesson begins.  How many times are we attempting to empower someone from a positional experience they are simply not ready for? Are you careful to gauge whether or not you are assisting in personal/professional growth or facilitating success in a way that is not repeatable for the person in front of you. The questions I consider in my work with learners when they are seeking assistance are:

1. What is the objective that is being identified as the goal/success/action to be completed?
2. Is there a known system of steps to create  that objective?
3. Does the person/company have in place a breakdown of processes to achieve that goal?
4. Where in the process is the system slowing/disconnecting/self destructing
5. What skill sets are required to facilitate the processes of the system
6. If the processes and system skill sets seem to be in place, have I walked through the entire group with them as though I am the client/customer/sales target or event being experienced?
7. Is an appropriate level of value being placed on each component of their system/process?
8. Is the system/objective appropriate to the current concern, objective, or on-going success?
9. What can be purchased/hired out/facilitated while skills are being acquired, or bartered as new skills needed are identified and obtained?
10. Is an appropriate amount of time being allowed and is there a check for understanding component to the learning as well as an understanding of how long each skill set should take to be obtained?
11. Are learning styles/modalities being considered before choosing training/software/purchased education or assistance?
12. At the end of the newly learned process and practice will the objectives for independent implementation be profitable or is this a task that simply has to be allowed to be done by an area expert, serviceman, or facilitator (is this too expensive for that person to learn to do in times of money, time spent, and value for labor extended)  Will the time invested be appropriate for the role the person performs in their position?

Systems management is important in our lives. Systems management in an entrepreneur’s life is essential for survival.  So often as we begin, our friends, cohorts, and mentors may assist us with their experience and knowledge to know how to begin or to assist with skill they can barter or freely give to us to assist us. It is my experience though, that even when gifting experience or skills, without further educating the receiver of the value of the time/energy/gift received, the effort becomes enabling, not empowering to the receiver

When we enable others we take away their power to own their success.  When we enable others our own ability to engage excellence is hindered by the conflict of alignments of helping versus hindering.  Integrity demands that alignment of purpose, procedure and products in our lives happen. Without the alignment of our actions and objectives, frustration is created, and relationships are strained.

Are you a mentor? parent? friend? coach?  Are you empowering others to be all they can be or are you enabling them to manipulate, depend upon, or continue self taught bad behaviors that are in the long run not only bad for the bear, but for you too?

We are all teachers and we are all learners.  The real question becomes what is it we are teaching and what are we learning ourselves? What are we preventing others from learning? When we choose to engage in others lives are we enabling or empowering them? What are our motives in the interaction? Leaders empower the people they engage. What are you experiencing in your walk with others?

  I love that my husband Les is not daunted by a wife who asks for $10.00 while yard sailing (because she always forgets her purse on Saturdays) and then smiles knowingly when I come back with something that most likely won’t fit in our vehicle that moment,  yet expects it to. I love that when I sit for dinner in our home, or lounge with our family that love is made visible throughout my home by the items Les has loved back to life…including me.

It matters.

The gift of shared vision is not one that came naturally to Les. I suspect ten years ago he had never refinished anything in his life. His idea of fixing something involved a purchase and a receipt. His love for my vision to do and have for others awakened in him a joy in making things happen as I have…and what a joy ride its been to see it in our home, as well as in peoples’ lives.

Chairs that are purchased for $2.50 each may not have any value to you. Sometimes the folks you pass by on the daily journey don’t either…they, like my chairs, may be so covered in grime, scars, and dirt that you simply don’t see the beauty they are….the unique creation they exist as.  It’s not always about refinishing either…often its simply about encouraging them to share their story…which unfolds in such a way you are no longer captured by their trappings but by their heart, experience and story.

What are you seeing where you are today? What is the vision you use? Is it purpose driven? Do Driven? Or are you open to allow that which is there show up in your picture in a more meaningful way.  Each moment we exist there is so much lost in our own directed living…perhaps that is the joy I love about Saturday morning yard sailing with Les…its unpredictable…its unordered…you cannot predict what God will drop into your world that day…whether its the heart that needs to be heard as they empty mom or dad’s home…or the struggle of a young couple trying to “do better” for their children and selves as they fight for their familyhood…

What do you allow in your life?

Who do you allow in your heart?

The memories are touchable in my home….as a visual tactile learner that isn’t surprising…but I know things are simply with me until someone else needs them more, then they, like they came, are hauled away often in a too small car to a new home to be loved by someone else’s family….and I walk back to the door with a smile on my heart and know that soon I’ll ask Les if I can borrow his wallet again…

and He smiles…and knows we’re starting all over again…

I love this man named Les and how he’s taught me to love past what I can initially see…