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Shannon Faulkner

What About Endurance?

It seems as though most of our generation is pretty good with whatever comes easiest. If you are hungry... go through the drive through. If you are thirsty.... run into 7-11. If you need a car... just finance it... or get one from your parents. When we want something we want it right now and in a hurry. The same is true for business success. What do we want? Whatever makes the money the fastest and gets the easiest results. Do we care if there is a foundation? Nope! We will just go from industry to industry until we can hit the mother lode. We fail and then we give up and try to just move on. We make our failure the fault of anyone that we can. In life and in business we do not endure and in failure we do not take responsibility. Why is this?

In World War II the generation in charge where tough. They were willing to sacrifice and they could do without just fine. The best part of Sunday dinner was the food and the fellowship. Stories were retold and sisters spent the evening laughing in the kitchen. When cake or pie was not an option because of the rationing of eggs and butter, people made crisps and cobblers. Life was hard... and that is an understatement, but life was about endurance. Businesses and business owners did what they could to survive. They helped others and sacrificed to be sure. Life evolved and things got "better". We now have more options and more opportunities. But somewhere along the line we lost the ability to endure.

How can we recover endurance? Well... simply be willing to do without. "Short term pain for long term gain". Do we ever really see that as a true statement? What are you willing to endure to find real success? Does real success mean that you have everything that you want and desire? I have said before that these blogs are for me as much as for my readers. I know that endurance means sacrifice. I know that endurance means living in your current circumstances until you get through to the other side. The operative work there is live! Live in your life right where you are. Stop trying to look past today and into tomorrow. Don't look at past successes and lament on what was either. Live in today. Live for right now. Find real success in the endurance of today.

Grace

Grace is interesting. We all ask for grace. We all think we are giving others grace, but do we really understand what it means to have grace? The bible says that grace means not getting something you deserve, it is a kindness born out of our love for God. It means being forgiven without ever being reminded of the offence. Sometimes I wonder if I have ever truly given grace. How many times have I said the WORDS that bring the THOUGHT of grace but do I ever really follow through with forgetting the offence?



I think if we were all to be truthful we would know that only God can give true grace to us. We can try to achieve the ability to give grace, but unless we forgive and forget, we never really achieve the goal. So then what is the point of grace? Why do we even attempt grace? Well, if I were to be truthful with all of you and with myself, I think sometimes I give grace because I am afraid what will come to me if I do not. God is pretty clear in His word about the giving of grace to others. We are not to bother with the tiny flecks and flaws in our brothers and sisters until we dig the log out of our own eyes. So to keep grace away from another person is like denying that we are human with our own human frailties. It is plain out hypocritical. So... the question remains... how do we let go of our rights to give to someone what they simply do not deserve?



I am not sure. I am human and I really mess up in this area. But when I attempt this, it is done with many tries and sometimes I just fail. But I find that if I keep failing forward, somewhere along the line I get to grace and then forgiveness comes. Grace is not a right. Grace is not easy. Grace is a gift, to those that receive it, but more so to those that give it.

The Great Balancing Act

Anyone who is a parent and owns a business know the struggle of "The Great Balancing Act". If you are like Jason and I, this balance resembles a teeter totter. Sometimes it drops the the ground on the family side and sometimes the business side. You are getting ready for an important meeting, the kind that can make or break your goals. Then, you get a phone call. Someone has had an accident that will require medical attention. You have a project due and all of the sudden you get caught up the whirlwind that is life. You have to make a decision... do you focus on work or do you focus on family?

If only I could waive a magic wand and say a few nonsensical words, then POOF! Life would balance out, all the chaos would be brought to calm and peace would reign supreme. So, how does a business owner balance out the needs of their clients or customers and the pressing needs of a family? Well, like every other thing in life that requires focus, you must set up boundaries however,  you must be willing to be flexible. Does this mean that your clients get the back seat all the time or does it mean that they get "shot gun" (slang in the Faulkner clan for sitting in the front seat)? I think that what this really means is to remember who you are and that life is messy.

If you think that you are always going to be on time to every appointment, or you think that you will never miss a track meet...ever... you will be a rugged mess and so will your family and your business too. Here are my top ten tips for balancing:

1. Have a calendar - preferably electronic- and put BOTH your family and business obligations on it.

2. Color code business/family/personal events and appointments different color blocks

3. Determine what your work hours will be and then stick to it!

4. If a family event comes up and you need to take some work time to take care of your family put the event into your calendar. Track your time and evaluate what is taking up your work hours. Maybe some changes can be made to create more of an environment of personal responsibility.

5. If a work event takes family time away, be also evaluating the events and network groups that might be affecting your family. Are they necessary? Do they bring you new business or connect you stronger and closer to your target market? If not, make the cut. Take it out of your calendar.

6. Create an environment at home and at work that can be successful. Don't overbook yourself in either area. Not only do you teach your children to overbook their lives, but you create a recipe for failure.

7. Choose a day to focus on the menial office tasks ( preferably not the weekend) and the same goes for home chores. For example, do not get in the habit of doing the laundry during work hours. Before you know it all your prime hours are being used to fold clothes! To keep this practice to a minimum determine your hourly rate and then decide if you can afford to fold clothes for $25 or $30 per hour.

8. Although it is good to carve out time for friends too, make sure that you are not supposed to be working when you go for coffee. Would you sit down in a chair visiting for 2 hours if you were working for someone else? Then don't do that to your company either.

9. Make sure you have appropriate daycare for your children during work hours. Whatever you do, do NOT bring your kids to work with you. If you own a storefront company, then not only will you annoy your staff, but you can run off your customers as well.

10. Make sure all your friends and family and children and everyone not related to work knows to call you AFTER work and not during the day. If you get a call, ignore it and then listen to the voice mail. This is difficult, and sometimes you will be chastised for it, but if you get caught up in the stuff of the day during your most productive hours, you will not find the success in business you are looking for. On the same token, make sure all your family and friends are listed in your phone so that you know not to answer work calls during personal or family time as well.

With a little organization and some firm but flexible boundaries you can set yourself up to have success in family, business and life. As with all good things, anything worth anything takes time and effort. Give the time and put in the effort, then watch your life grow.

Betrayal

What is betrayal? Is it the living of a life that seems one way but then clears up to be another? Is it depending on someone and finding they are no where to be found? Is it dreaming of a business, and then during the investigative part of the process, finding that someone you trusted took your idea? What is betrayal? Is there anything you can do once you have been betrayed?

The bad news is that once you are betrayed, unless you put up safeguards for yourself you most likely will be betrayed again and again. The good news is that if you put up safeguards, you might still be betrayed, but the action will happen with your eyes wide open. Then it will be you betraying yourself. It is still betrayal. The pain has the same intensity but this time you have a choice to put yourself out there unprotected and you can welcome the pain. All in all, whether you let yourself down or someone else does... betrayal....simply put...sucks!

What is there to do once you hit the wall of pain called betrayal? Well first evaluate the situation. What actually happened? Who was involved? Who was the offender? Who did the offending? Was there really anything that could have been different in the situation? Lastly.... the most important part... and the most painful part of all... what was your part in the betrayal? Did you let this happen to yourself and for what reasons?

Most of us let ourselves be betrayed because we have a vision of life that is one of dreams and happiness. Where pain and mean people are just dark shadows lurking on the edges of the dark forest. You are in the happy valley playing with the enchanted animals of life and you cannot imaging one of those shadows coming out into your sunshine and bringing with it the cloud of darkness. You get ambushed by the forest. Ripped to shreds as you run through the forest looking for the next land of rainbows, only to find more forest and more darkness. You stop for just a moment and pray, then you get a glimpse a hint of sunlight and you move towards it. Before you know it you are in the sunshine again, only you have less rose to your sunglasses of life.

The hard part is putting in place the boundaries to keep the forest from ripping up your life. Taking a step back, evaluating the situation, listening to the people in your life who are the truth tellers. Reminding yourself about who you really are and then moving towards that person again. Know who you are so when you are derailed you know where to get back to. Betrayals will come. Don't let betrayal take from you your core...who you are.

Are you REAL?

Last week someone told me that maybe I should be more careful about what I post on my blog. That what I say may not be very professional and could actually result in my losing new business. I thought about that good and hard. Then I sat down to try and write a more professional blog, one that is more about my industry and less personal. Then I searched the Internet and found that there are LOTS of blog entries and articles on marketing. More articles on marketing then I could ever possibly read in my whole lifetime. Do I need to write about marketing because I am a marketing consultant?

The answer to that lies in my title for this blog. Am I real? Am I being true to myself? So, to clarify in case anyone is wondering why I write the way that I do, it is because I choose to write about what makes me who I am. I have been in the business world for almost a decade, before that I was a college student and then mommy. I felt like I had a whole series of different "me's" to deal with. In college there was the "me" that had to forget I was a mom and forge on getting that term paper in by the deadline whether or not my baby was teething or I spent the night in the ER with my toddler getting stitches. When I was being"mom" I had to forget I was a young and attractive college student. Other mom's were unimpressed with my "A" in cultural anthropology and could care less of my ability to emulsify the fat from a potato chip and give the chemical equation for the process. In my business life everything was massively intensified. Enter in the shark factor and the immense desire people have to pillage and destroy new and young talent in their own pursuit of "happiness".

Over the many years of being a different person to each group of people in my life I began to feel invisible. I began to wonder if I really was anything at all? Am I really talented at anything? Can I really be successful in anything? Who the heck am I anyways? Then life happened. A bomb exploded into my life ripping and tearing it all to shreds. Everything that I new to be true was false and everything false I didn't recognize anymore. In my horror I decided to re-evaluate who I am and what I am to myself. I looked inward and found I was hiding in all of those people I was trying to become. The REAL me was in there, but I was not even sure if I knew who that person really was. So, I coaxed her out and asked her who she really wanted to be? What kind of wife? What kind of mom? What kind of business woman and what industry? Where did she want to live? What were HER dreams? She spent so many years trying to make everyone else's dreams come true, she wasn't sure she even had a dream anymore. Then it happened... she began to dream again. I began to emerge and that is when I decided some very important things about myself.

I define myself based on what I know myself to be. I have spent time getting to know the REAL me and trying to create a way to love her. I have decided I am not a mom, a wife, a business woman, a marketing constant, a christian who loves Jesus, or____________ ( fill in the blank). I am me, one person. I feel my life is an amalgam of different parts. It is more like a mosaic than a painted picture. If I ever hope to achieve anything REAL in my life I have to be true to myself and encourage others to be who God created them to be too. So, that is what I am going to do. I am going to keep writing my blog and encouraging other people to be who they are. To examine themselves and see if they can bring all the pieces together to create and to dream and to live.

Changes

Changes happen whether we wish them to or not. It seems that the more I try to control the changes in my life the more my life changes and then changes and then changes. I would like to think that I can just work a little harder to keep to the distractions that come from changes at bay. If I can just schedule the changes or the results from the changes that some how I will be in the "loop" with the change makers. Not so. I couldn't keep my life from imploding with death and divorce. Just as I can't keep my children from growing up and moving away from me or friends from moving on to other relationships. Change happens weather I like it or not. So what CAN I do?

I can be flexible to change. I can be pliable and allow change to have it's way in my life. I can work to foster an environment that allows for change to come in like an old friend and less like an enemy to be avoided at all costs. I can also allow the people in my life permission to make room for their changes too. This is probably the hardest part. It is easy to say, " Hey...I am growing and changing. If you wish to be a part of my life you will accept the changes in me". And less so to say " Hey, I know you are changing as change is as normal as breathing. I give you permission to change, to move away, to have other friends, to work with another company that suits your needs better." We need to allow others to be who change is going to make them.

What do I do if someone in my life is trying to hold onto what I no longer am, who I changed from? We need to be open and honest. Kind but firm with our perception of the changes that are happening in our lives. I find that the more I change the more someone is trying to keep me the same. The same mom, the same wife, the same friend, the same business associate. There is a saying "Some people come into your lives for a reason, some for a season and some for a lifetime." In life we often have to determine who each person is in our lives and that realization can really be painful at times. In order to change in a healthy way where we accept what is happening in our lives, we must perform this duty to ourselves.

However, there are things in life that happen that you simply can never anticipate or ever come back from even remotely the same. I have experienced some real deep cuts in my life and I have bled so deeply that I thought the bleeding would never stop. The good news is that the pain did subside, some may never go away, but the bleeding has stopped. I will never be the same, I know this. Those who truly love me know this. But I would never want to go back to what I was before the pain and the change. I am a new person. I can love wider and deeper. I can understand much more and feel much more. I can empathise and sympathise. I am a new person, I can accept who I am and am more willing to bend to the changes in life.

Can you have a dream? Really have a dream?

Dreams are crazy things. They require quite a bit to create them and even more to achieve them. They are exhausting! The hardest part of dreaming is when you think they cannot come true. What kind of dreams have you had? Recording an amazing album? Writing a top selling novel? Seeing all of your children graduate from high school and then college? How about traveling the world! Meeting the love of your life and then creating a business that helps other businesses grow and achieve dreams of their own! These are just a few of my dreams. Parts of them have been realized. Some of them are simply no longer dreams of mine... or are they? Hmmmmm.....what am I willing to do to achieve my goals?

Well.. my favorite quote is " A goal is a dream with a deadline" from Napoleon Hill. How do you make a dream a reality? I am not sure to be honest with you. Most of these blogs I write are for myself. To encourage me to look deeper and wider and grow stronger. I hope in the midst of my growing you will too... but I digress. Dreams...How do you step from dream to goal with a deadline and then be able to say you achieved your dreams? Well....hmmmmm....again what am I willing to do to achieve these goals?

Take my first goal...recording an album. I have recorded music...and I have recorded 5 songs on a CD with a group I was in. Did I achieve my goal? Does all dreams have to be huge? Most of the people who have heard the album I recorded with my group "Beyond the Walls" loved it. It was not for resale and used strictly as a promotional item to be able to sing new places. This led me to another band "DeProgrammed", a gospel funk band ( I was the only...light girl... they called me the "angel"... another story for another day...). We recorded an original song that was AMAZING! I loved it. I loved recording it. Did I achieve my dream?

Then what about the novel? I have one completely written. However... it is sitting in my computer and on my external hard drive waiting for a friend to edit it. It has been waiting for this friend for one full year. Is it my friend's fault it is not on it's way to a publisher? OR is it my fault for not encouraging my friend or maybe writing a letter of inquiry anyways... even though it is not edited? Do I have a timeline for this dream? Have I made it a goal yet?

I have watched two of my children graduate from high school and I have 5 more to go. One child will be attending college this fall. I am married to the most AMAZING man ever. Jason is my prince and he is the love of my life. We are building a business and THIS dream does have a deadline. It has a business plan and a marketing plan and a plan plan. This dream is now a goal and we most certainly have a deadline. Is this dream any more or less of a dream than the other ones? The best part of dreaming is being the keeper of the keys to the dream. YOU are the keeper of your KEYS to your dreams.

The answer is all my dreams have become goals but all my goals do not have deadlines, so I may or may not achieve these dreams. However, I can ALWAYS dream. I can STRIVE to achieve and then WORK like crazy to see these dreams come true. YOU can too. You CAN dream. You can see your DREAMS become goals and then see your dreams come TRUE.  What do you do though? Make a deadline for these dreams. Dust off your manuscript, create a dream board and put it over your desk. Cut out sayings and save your fortune cookie fortunes. Cut out magazine articles and follow successful people in your field. Be a doer and not just a dreamer. Your DREAMS will come TRUE once YOU decide to PURSUE (them).

Pain

Pain. Who likes pain? There are those who profess to like pain. They endure pain like a badge of honor and talk of pain as though it is nothing more than a minor annoyance. But if you were to strip away all the facade what would you really find? Well, without their willingness to work through the pain one can never be sure what is truly behind it all, but I have an idea it began a long time ago.

In my life pain has been a staple. It was my childhood companion, it followed me into my tween and teen years. It accompanied me into my first marriage and all though the childhoods of my children. It was a weed rooted deep into my soul, blooming and throwing its many seeds into the lives of the others that surround me. I cannot really remember the beginnings of it, what the circumstances that surrounded it's inception, but most likely I was in the line of fire of another person's seed pod of pain.

What I have learned about pain is that no matter how much of it I endure, there is always more to come. When I think that life is going well and there are just rainbows and unicorns playing in my field of dreams, you can bet pain is there lurking around with his buddy despair just waiting to prick my balloon and rain all over my parade. Now if you were thinking... whew... that sure is a lot of idiomatic expressions all in one sentence... (I simply cannot help it... I love them to be sure!) and you are now so depressed that you cannot imagine how you will manage your life today... you now understand what it is like to feel pain. There is some silver left yet in the cloud! ( You guessed it...another idiom). With pain comes understanding. With understanding comes action.

What can you do about pain? Is there anything at all? First, you need to understand what happened to bring you such pain. This is the hard part. Most people do not really want to revisit the events that brought the pain in the first place. They start down the path, then they get a glimpse of what it was and then they run like crazy away from it again leaving the path  to sit there waiting for another brave moment in time. It is the first step to getting through to face your pain in the fullness of it. Once you have an understanding of pain and what happened to bring you so much of it, then it's time for action. You now know what caused the pain so the obvious action is.... stop doing what causes pain. Easier said then done. I know. Another simple yet crazy hard action... let the pain go. Quit playing with pain. Quit dating pain. Quit living with pain.

When I am in pain, and I am a normal human and actually this blog today is for me, I try to do all that I mentioned above. I examine my pain, I understand what brought me to the pain and then I do all that I can to get rid of it and stop whatever I am involved in that brings me pain. But before any of this can happen, I get on my knees and I offer up the yucky mess that pain has brought into my life to my Abba Daddy, my Father God. I tell him how much I hate what is happening. I ask for help from Him, and if I am at all intelligent, I wait for Him to ease my pain. I am not always successful in this and sometimes I sneak right back up when I think He might not be looking and I pull that pain right out of His hands. He is a gentle Father and so He lets me have it back if I am truly not ready to give it up to Him. But if I want real relief I let it go and let Him fling it "as far as the east is from the west". So, what about you? Do you want relief from your pain? Or do you wish to keep playing in the mud of life?

Shannon Faulkner

Dissappointment

Have you ever been so excited about something, anticipated the day, waiting patiently by the mail box and then when everything comes to be, you are left sorely disappointed. Your hopes are dashed your life feels unstable and you simply cannot imagine how things could have gone more wrong. What is one to do when life disappoints you so desperately? You know there is quite a wait and quite a mess to clean up, but you simply are not sure how this is going to happen.

Some people in my life put their life on hold until the resolution can be seen. They cancel their appointments, they wait at home for the answer. They don't answer the door or the phone or return e-mails until they can make the bad stuff all go away. Some people make lists. They are systematic about everything. They make plans of action and attack the issue of disappointment like they would the attic or the garage for spring cleaning. Then some people go on a rampage of anger. They make their disappointment everyone else's fault and responsibility to clean up. They make excuses for why it happened, and how it happened and who was responsible for the happening. They ruin relationships. They destroy business plans. They needlessly fire employees or treat them with such abuse that they just quit.

Then there are the people who I love in my life. They take a step back. They look at what happened and grieve the pain that comes from the disappointment in their life. They find out what went wrong and then they try to see if there is a solution by asking people for help understanding the circumstances surrounding the loss of their hope or dream. They do not let the people who are truly responsible get out from underneath their own part in the problem, but they do not nail them to the wall either. They are generous and gracious because that is just who they are. They plan for their return from the disappointment and are hopeful for the future and the new dreams they get to dream.

I do not have many people like this in my life, but I do have a few very special ones and they know just who they are. However, I do have many of the other people in my life. I have even found myself embodying these actions when I am in the midst of great disappointment. I forget who I really am and I go to a very dark place that is hard to get out of. So, you may wonder how do you move from being an ostrich, a neurotic chihuahua or a raging.... bull to a rising phoenix? There is really only one way and that is though prayer and faith. Knowing that God will bring the right people and the right opportunity to bring resolution. So, don't give up on your dreams because you experience disappointment, bring those pains to the Father and know He will return to you an unending well of joy for your temporary valley of hurt and disappointment. Disappointment will come like a full moon, but so will the dawn of a new day.

Shannon Faulkner