Have you seen the movie The Pursuit of Happyness? The one with Will Smith? Yes, the movie title is spelled with a Y in happiness. This movie has recently become one of my favorites. It is a true story about a man named Christopher Gardner and his determination to make a better life for himself and his son. Every time Chris seems to take two steps forward, life always threw something his way causing him to take one step backwards. Keep in mind, there are some great differences between the actual true story and what was depicted in the movie. Either way, this story has truly emulated the past few years of my life;
especially this year.
In spite of the constant struggles, I still maintain a positive outlook on life. No matter how hard things get, I still do not let others know what I am truly experiencing behind closed doors. While I do have a wonderful family, supportive husband, and three healthy children, there are still some things that are holding us back from the greatness that we are trying to achieve in our lives. Our struggles are mainly financial, but we are also faced with the challenge of our three physically healthy children having a diagnosis of Autism.
To any of the other #NewbieEntrepreneurs out there, stay positive. Surround yourself with positive and like-minded people. This is one of the most important things that keeps my husband and I in a positive state of mind. That and LOTS of prayer. No matter how prepared you think you are for the life of self employment, something will always come along to test your strength, faith, and patience. One perfect example would be my husband and I. We saved up a decent little nest egg to take care of us after he took the leap of faith and left his full time job to work in our new small business full time. Well, two months in, and both of our cars have taken turns in breaking down causing our savings to become 0. We remained positive and focused despite the challenges. Then, we had a ridiculously slow month of business and fell behind on our financial obligations. Sadly, there is so much more to this dramatic story on how much worse things got; but since I like to focus on the positive, I won't go down that road. What I will say is that during our ridiculously slow month, we continued to Network, and Network, and Network some more. We have gained wonderful relationships through networking. This struggle really forced us to look outside of the box for any other opportunities to bring in some supplemental income. Thankfully things started to shift in our favor and work started to come in. We are still struggling severely, but no one in the outside world knows this just by looking at us or meeting us. You know why? Because we refuse to be victims. We refuse to take on that victim mentality where we blame the world for our struggles. We choose to be victorious in our Pursuit of Happiness!
In a previous post I mentioned that I am always looking for additional streams of income to supplement the slow times with my main small business. So I signed up with an MLM company as an independent associate to hopefully gain some part time income. I started this blog because research has shown me that blogging is a great way to gain traffic towards your MLM business. So since I am still fighting the self conscious feelings of what others may perceive of me, I chose to do an anonymous blog. And then eventually when there is enough content to share, I will share my blog and possibly my identity in hopes of bringing online traffic to my MLM company website; and of course my small business website too. ;-)
Anyhow, I hope that any of the other Newbies who read my posts can gain some inspiration from me and my determination to focus on what is right in my life rather than what is wrong in my life. This thought process of mine is due to my willingness to get out of my box and explore. My last 7 years have been spent focusing all of my time and energy into helping my kids learn to communicate and progress. Now that they are doing so well, it is time for me to get out and do what I can to change our lives. My husband has been my biggest supporter. I hope that you all have someone who will support you in your pursuit of happiness.
#GetOutOfYourBox It really makes a difference! Happiness must be pursued, it does not just come naturally!
My favorite quotes that really keep me going:
(Determination)
"The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed." - Richard Brinsley
Sheridan
(Thinking outside of the box)
"A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there." - Unknown
(Faith)
"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." - Martin Luther King Jr.
