#How Life is #Working For Your #Future Self

Last year on my morning walk,  before I had to make my commute downtown, I was listening to the newest episode of the Ed Mylett podcast. I remember him saying “Let life happen FOR you, not TO you. Wow, how empowering right? If I could switch my mindset to get rid of complaints and what I didn't have and use what I do have to work for me, I could create possibilities.

I think when you hear something like that, you can look back at your past and realize that this is how life is working all along. You may think that when you met your spouse after a terrible breakup to an idiot you thought you would love forever. Or you may think that life worked for you when you didn’t get the job you applied for but got an even better one a few months later. Look back and you will see how life worked for you. It is there.

For me, at the point in time when I heard this, I was a manager of a direct sales team of 10 for a fortune 56 company. I was proud of my career and loved the company I was working for. I had started with that company about 9 years prior. I had moved up the ladder and been promoted 5 times in 9 years. I am highly competitive, I am motivated by money and love making it, and I wanted to keep learning and growing with that company. The only thing I did not love was that I only saw my kids 2 hours per day on Monday through Friday. I was livin’ for the weekend. This was slowly killing me. My family is my #1 above all else. How could I keep this up? What was it all for?

When I first started out in my career in sales at this company, I would go from small business to small business educating business owners and selling the benefits of our product. I would go all over the state and talk one on with with so many unique personalities within the entire state. It worked FOR me to be from a small town because I could then feel that I could relate to just about anyone I met. I learned how to build, grow and keep relationships and then moved into a telephonic inside sales position where those skills were easily transferable. This job taught gave me experience with negotiating, underwriting, “asking for the sale”, getting creative to make a deal work, and how to solve a problem. It was my favorite job that I had at the company. Also, as a side hustle, I started working as a consultant for a startup clean beauty company called Beautycounter, selling products directly to family and friends. This was extremely challenging and taught me so much about sales, communication, educating and again, solving a need. I still “sell” Beautycounter to this day and I continue to learn from the amazing company.

However, with my competitive nature, love for helping and growing others and want to grow my own experience and career, I soon found myself managing a direct sales team at my corporate gig. In this role I had to learn everything possible about digital marketing, something I knew nothing about. It was difficult at first, but I kept thinking, this is happening for me.

What I realized is that anything in life that I wanted to do as an entrepreneur would need sales, marketing, problem solving negotiation, and relationships. After studying real estate, realizing that there are ways to make money without a 9-5 job and buying my first property, I realized that this entire time that I was away from my 3 kids and husband daily, life was working FOR me. I now, after 10 years, had the experience, money, skills, and confidence to go and do what I wanted on my own.

If you are wondering what the hell you are doing in your life, it could be that life is working FOR you in some way. It could be that it already has and it is time for you to take that big step and take ACTION.