WomenCo.

We're All Olympians In Life

I am a pretty amazing woman – I may not be an Olympic athlete, but I am an Olympic woman in life. I’ll bet you are too!

I have been using the wrong measuring stick as to my worth and achievements. It is the money stick! We get mesmerized by the glitter of celebrities and the Fortune list of the wealthiest people. We compare ourselves with a system that honors entertainment more than education, more than how we care for our families, or how hard we work. We compare our bodies to bodies that we are told are the bodies to have in order to have happiness. We need to stop comparing ourselves with unrealistic goals. What’s good for one person is not necessarily good for you or me.

What brought this to my mind today is my comparison measuring stick. I am enrolled in an accelerated Six Figure Mentorship program. I caught myself comparing myself with the achievements of one the Six Figure members. I am happy for the person who succeeded in reaching her goals, but not happy for me. Why? Because I was telling myself there is something wrong with what I am doing. I know I am not alone in gremlin thinking. We beat ourselves with negative thoughts and feelings more than any foe would do. Then, of course, there is the body image measuring stick, wanting a figure to match Angelina Jolie or Halle Berry. If only I would lose weight, my life would be so much better! That is false dreaming. We know of people who have lost weight only to gain it back. They didn’t reduce the negative self-esteem to match the healthier body.

So here is my true measuring stick for the last eight years: The first five years of the millennium were full of challenges from being a caregiver to both my aunt, who sadly passed away more than two years ago, and my homebound mother. I was laid off in mid-2003 from a company that was downsizing. In mid-2004 I ended up in the hospital emergency room. My stay was 15 days – you know they don’t keep you in the hospital for that long unless it is serious. It had to do with radiation side effects. I ended up in the hospital again due to radiation side-effects in January 2005 – this time a shorter stay. At the end of 2006 I lost two of my beloved cats, Desiree and Prospero.

Life is not lived linearly. While all of the above was happening in my world, I persevered in following through with building my dream coaching business, Right Track Coaching. I enrolled in the Coaches Training Institute’s coaching certification program and was certified in 2000. I didn’t stop with certification. I have invested shamelessly in developing my skills to offer my clients the best and continue to do so. Because I have been building my business for several years, I have been erroneously using the money stick to measure my success, telling myself that by this time I should be earning six figures. The fact is that it has only been since 2007 when I could put in the time and commitment needed to grow any business. That is less than two years!

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