Moments of Clarity Often Come in Disguise

I want to reflect on a moment of clarity I had recently. I took a sales job, thinking it should be easy enough, but failed miserably. That is to say I miserably failed to bring in money and actually paid quite a bit to stay and fail. We do not learn things through success, our greatest moments of progress occur in failure. We learn what not to do, what to do differently, and what really matters to us.

From this experience I learned that I would do things differently as far as selling to make it more ethical and a win win for everyone. I am still working on and exact method, but it got me to look for a different way, and that is what is important. I was talking to someone, the other day, about some ideas I had on a new direction to take the presentation. He said to me "what makes you so sure this will work, what if this doesn't work either, what will you do then?". I realized, in this moment, that irregardless of the outcome, the experience would be priceless. I would gain so much more from it than money. In fact my previous failure turned out to be extremely valuable.

While this insight was great, I had another unexpected benefit of this financial failure. It taught me what I really wanted in life. When I first started I brought my daughter with me to all office meetings, and office related work that I had to do. After some time of failing to even get any appointments, it was suggested to me that I leave Celina in the care of the my boss' daughter and nanny for a reasonable rate. I decided to give this a try. For about a month I took her to this babysitter while I put all my effort into making this succeed. I worked 10 hour days, put in 100 miles a day, spent tons on gas and eating out, spent money for babysitting, invested in any material I thought I would need, and in general tried to apply myself to everything I was told to do. Burn out was happening really quick. I became short with Celina and my husband, my house was a disaster, and the only time I got to see Celina was when we were asleep. I missed her so much. And to top it off, I was utterly failing to make any sales or have a steady stream of appointments. One day, it was strongly suggested to me, that I turn in all my equipment and leave the company. I was devastated, I had tried so hard, what was I doing wrong, why was I failing? I had done everything I was told, why was I failing?

Through a very long conversation with my husband, and much reflection, I finally figured out why, with all this effort, I had produced no monetary results. It took away from me in two areas. One I was being asked to perform certain aspects of selling and setting appointments which I found to go against my beliefs. I felt I was being dishonest and sleezy. This lead to realizing that I needed to find a new way of selling. The second thing I realized was that I wanted to be a stay at home mom, however someone else was with my daughter for the best part of her day, I barely saw her. This was wrong, how was I going to be able to homeshool if I was never home? How could I be a stay at home mom if I was never home. This went against what I thought motherhood should be, and was asking me to be a completely different person than I am.

Once I left, I realized that I wanted to be at home. So now my days could be spent in making this a good home, not lamenting on all that I was missing by not having a job. This was in September of 2008. Since then I have completely transformed my home into an environment that is conducive for Celina's learning. I am making great headway in organizing my home, getting rid of clutter, and crating more useful spaces. I have become focused on what I want, create what I want, and realize what is really important to me, my daughter. I can now look to the future with clarity and certainty that I am on the right path. I am even making great strides in the other things I want to do like taking control of my health and learning about natural living. I now want to go back to school and I know what I want to study. Most of all I realize my role in Celina's development, and the importance of my presence.