I started by business to be a work at home mom. You know, the kind that goes to play group, teaches their 18 month old to read, and then works for an hour or two in the afternoon while the little one naps.
Bliss.
But I changed my mind. I got a taste for entrepreneurship, passion-filled work, and truly stepping into my potential and I changed my mind. Suddenly, when posed with a choice between full-time motherhood and full-time mother-of-business-hood. I chose to mother my business.
It was a big change, done gradually. Yet the transformation as I see it today is startling.
I often catch my breath realizing just how different things are – how little I see my little girl, how routines have evolved, how my husband has changed.
When I started my business, nearly 2 and a half years ago, I set out blogging about craft culture in Pennsylvania. I wrote & created for other blogs. Then I learned as much about web design as I could. I bought a business and changed my focus again. I changed and evolved. Changed and evolved.
I’ve changed my editorial style at Scoutie Girl more times than I can count.
I’ve changed how frequently and about what I blog here.
I’ve changed my job title so many times that I have about a thousand unusable business cards in my office.
My only constant is that a new change is right around the corner.
I’m unapologetic about the number of times I’ve changed course in the last 5 years. Let alone the last 28.
The first paradox is that growing up is about rejecting the past and then promptly reclaiming it.
— Courtney Martin, TED talk
We are always rejecting & reclaiming, in what is often both a beautiful & ugly cycle. We resist change and then embrace it. We are open to possibility and then make up our minds.
Change is inevitable.
But how do you know when to change?
You don’t and you do.
A change is always a gamble. It can go right and it can go wrong. But you don’t know until you pull the lever.
A change will always feel like an abandonment and a warm embrace. You will always be letting go of one thing while birthing another.
It’s time to change when what you’re doing isn’t meeting your goals, when you can envision a different path getting you closer to your destination. It’s time to change when your heart or life throws you a curve ball.
It’s time to change, well, when you want to.
Changing your [mind, business, life, circumstances] doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It’s not a sign of personal weakness.
It takes courage to do something different. To turn the corner.
What really matters when you make a change is that you are stripping away one – tiny, even – piece of what doesn’t work for you. That’s how you know you’re making a “right” decision.
The thing about change is that you can [almost] always change back.
What have you been dying to change? What’s keeping you from doing the deed?
