“The definition of resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
Failure helps us practice our resilience, but how do we build resilience from failure?
Resilience is not a skill that is learned over night, resilience is something that must be practiced, nurtured and built upon.”
People have been asking how I’m doing, as well as what is happening with Karma so I thought I’d share some of what’s been going on with me. I have to admit that despite my greatest efforts, I’ve been feeling pretty unmotivated as of late, deflated, defeated, unsettled and anxious. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. The second lockdown has brought upon a wave of new emotions, and I’ve spent much of these very quiet days questioning what I’m doing, and what I will be doing going forward. How can any of us truly plan for the future of our business when it seems that so much, if not all of it is currently well beyond our control? The answer is, we really can’t, well in theory anyway…
As an entrepreneur, there is always uncertainty and you have no way of knowing if your vision, your plan or idea is going to succeed. You could have exhausted all research, and written the most extensive of business plans, but you just never really know until you open the door what the outcome will be. That’s because the outcome is entirely determined by someone other than yourself. Every business, every idea or concept, no matter what it looks like, is dreamed up and launched with the consumer of that product or service as the primary driver. Simply because without them, without you, there is no business.
Back to failure, and the topic of my blog today. I’ve been struggling with the state of Karma right now. (Karma being my bar, not the concept, although I suppose both are quite fitting at the moment)
I will preface this by saying I don’t want to turn this in to any sort of debate, and I do want to assure you all that I agree this is a real virus, that it is serious, and that people are dying and we all need to do what we can to keep ourselves and others safe. However, because of this pandemic, the state of mine and so many other businesses are no longer being determined by the consumers of our products or services, nor by the owners effort, expertise, skillset, passion or follow through. It’s being determined by a pandemic and by a set of rules put in to place that have given us no choice but to abide by them. This has taken everything we know as business owners and flipped it upside down. We have had to do what we can to try to continue to operate somehow within these strict, ever changing and most times vague, rules and guidelines, to try to continue to deliver our products and services to consumers. Either by shifting our vision and how we operate completely, or by making the difficult decision to close temporarily, as I have done. Is this a failure, yes, I would say that I look at it as such even though most will say it was beyond my control.
Beyond my control or not, to me, it’s still failure.
I recently made a confession to someone that I haven’t had the emotional capability of sharing with anyone because frankly, admitting this was difficult enough. I just never expressed it to anyone else, because telling someone would mean the failure I was feeling would be real and that I would have to be real with myself. In return, I was met with some very honest, realistic feedback in his “humble opinion” as he put it. Not so humble at all, even though admittedly not exactly what I wanted to hear, but exactly what I needed to hear. I truly thank him for this candid conversation. I won’t offer up specific details, but will say that it was predicated on this concept of failure and how we, or more specifically I in this situation, had chosen to deal with it. This same man told me that Covid has destroyed our industry, and while I like to try to be somewhat optimistic I can’t say I disagree. It definitely has and will change how we all operate, if we even choose to, going forward.
I will say that I am truly blessed to have a few wonderful people in my life who support me and have been there for me. You know who you are. I’m so grateful for them and for all of my wonderful Lovelies who send me your thoughts, and positive messages and vibes daily! This has certainly not been an easy thing to have to deal with, to say the least but having you all in my life has definitely been some shelter in the storm.
So here’s what I’ve learned. Failures are inevitable, Things change, many times beyond our control, but we still have to learn how to change with them. Resilience and being real with yourself is the key.
Stay well My Lovelies!
See you soon 😉 ❤
