Author: Solae Dehvine
As an entrepreneur you are constantly trying to be better and do better. I'm always working on some kind of way to improve and lately its been really difficult to be motivated.
This past couple of years has been about massive healing for me in parts of my life that I didn't know needed healing. I am a changed woman because of this healing. And since my business depends on me that healing affects my business. Just an added bonus to continue on with the journey, but it isn't easy.
In my search for trying to heal and move past a long list of stuff these days I try to figure out where my fear or apprehension for things come from and I ran across an article about something called 'Goal Trauma'.
It's a great article by Margaret M. Lynch on her blog...check it out.
I was a little skeptical of the article at first but as I read I can see how someone can be traumatized by their goals. Myself in particular.
Imagine this, you put your all into something. All your money, time, belief, prayers, positive vibes. Your hyped up on this goal and you have dotted all i's and crossed t's. You believe with your highest ability that everything will work out right and BOOM...it doesn't. As a matter of fact it fails and blows up in your face. Let me give you a personal example...
This day was one of the worst of my life...
You can't tell by this picture but I was mad AS FUCK!!!! The worst thing had happened....
When I first started writing I decided to throw a party at a club. We called it 'Premiere Prevention'. On one side there would be a party and on the other side of the club there would be STD testing. I thought it was a great idea because at the time I had a blog called Sexmentality. I felt this made perfect sense and sold tickets and at the time I put ALL of my money into this party.
I was expecting to get money from the door and thought I would pack the club. I hired hosts, musicians, security, waitresses, bottles, etc.
Then the day of...there was a horrible storm. I don't mean just a little rain, I mean flood level rain in just a few hours. It rained so heavy and all night that maybe 10 people or so showed up to the party. I was deflated and worst of all it put me in debt.
I took a 2K loss on that party. It wasn't just the money but the timing of it all. A week later my husband lost his job and a couple weeks after that I lost mine. I had put all my money into a party, in debt because of the party and then I have no job.
Oh...and right before the party my car got towed so I had to pay a nice amount to get my car out too. I was what they call "broke broke" from all of that. BROKE BROKE BROKE all because of this damn party. I was so mad at the party that I had zero fun. I should have popped the bottles and laughed my ass off with the people that were there. But I was so distraught about the money that I was in a daze the whole night.
I thought of a million things I could have spent 2K on and got a lot more enjoyment out of it.
It was sickening and a loss that took me months to recover from. But I did recover and no one died or loss a limb but that party scarred me. I didn't realize how deeply until I read the article.
So I'm going to work on healing from that. Here is how I will do it...just like any other trauma because the brain can't tell the difference between physical, mental, or perceived trauma or pain it just recognizes that there was pain.
- I have to be truthful about how it felt and what happened. I've never thrown a party of that magnitude before. I was new to business and party promotions is a whole different beast that I knew nothing about.
- I have to look at the situation and analyze it without judgement. Look at what went wrong. Understand that you are human but tell yourself for example. "Okay the party didn't go as planned but I'm not a failure for it. Things happened and next time I can and will do better. Its not the end of the world."Easier said than done I know...
- Be gentle with yourself. This situation hurt and you have to tell yourself it will be okay.Truth was things weren't okay. To mitigate the situation we ended up moving in with family. It worked out because that decision lead to another business situation. But I was embarrassed, hurt, and mad as fuck. Depressed wasn't even the word. I think I gained like 50 pounds after that. Shit was bad.
Maybe I'll write a letter about how it made me feel, take it outside and burn it. You have to release the emotions and maybe I never released or acknowledged mine.
Ultimately that party taught me a lot of things. I should probably throw another one...even saying that makes me apprehensive. I gotta work on that...lol
Have you ever taken a business or professional loss? Tell me about it. We gotta talk about these things and acknowledge them so we can move on.
Believe me...not every book I write is a home run. I sort of equate it to the life of a baseball player. In baseball failing and getting comfortable with it is apart of the game. In being an entrepreneur we have so many "At bats" everyday that sometimes our greatest accomplishment is swinging the bat... sometimes that is all we have is our ability "to swing" and where the ball ends up is our of our control. Just concentrate on swinging.
Keep grinding warriors...no matter the situation we have to heal from it to keep going.
Happy Monday!
~SD~