Have you seen Julie and Julia with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams? I love that movie! I found it very inspiring how both women found something lacking in their lives and took the necessary steps to change it. Even though people thought they couldn't do it, and it was hard, and at times they felt like giving up, they didn't. They kept pressing forward and made their dreams a reality. Very cool!
I've been feeling the same way lately--like there's something lacking in my life. I've been very busy being a mom of a 3 and a 1 1/2 year old who are the light in my life, striving to become a Sales Director with Mary Kay Cosmetics which I enjoy, and trying to be a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which I know to be true, but there's still something missing. I haven't been really happy. Instead I've been really stressed-out--definitely feeling a surplus of stress. But I'm finally taking the steps to change that.
Now don't get me wrong, I love Mary Kay. I love the company, the woman, everything they teach and stand for, and the ladies I that work with. But you know, the whole thing where I don't get paid unless I make sales is...well, way stressful, as you can imagine. I was working really hard to be consistent and work full-time hours so that my pay wouldn't rely on only one or two parties a month, but it wasn't working out as well as I had hoped, and I had a hard time balancing my time between my family and my job. When I was working, I felt guilty that I wasn't spending more time with my kids or cleaning my house (which was always way messier than even a young mom's house should be), and when I was with my family, I had this nagging feeling that I needed to be working in order to make my sales goal for the week.
You know that lady that's married to her phone and is constantly texting, emailing, and doing other work-related things on it when she should be enjoying her time with her family? Yeah, I was turning into that lady, and she was someone I had never wanted to be. I just wasn't making my Mary Kay business work for me.
But I wanted it. I loved how motivating the women were, the rush I got from helping someone feel beautiful, the joy I got from making a sale. I wanted to become a Director, inspire other women to go for their dreams, and, most importantly, earn enough money to pay off our deb and buy a house. Then last September, my Senior Sales Director offered a training course to help us get past our mental blocks so that we can move forward and become great leaders. I knew that that was something for me and decided to invest the time, money, and effort into it.
It was awesome! I learned a lot about myself and why I think the way I do. I learned that I feel like I don't deserve success because, for one reason or another, I'm not worthy of it. If I were making $5000 a month, I was afraid that I would squander it instead of paying off my debt like I should. So in order to avoid that situation, I was holding myself back from moving forward to Directorship.
And then our training came to our dreams, and my training came to a standstill. We were supposed to imagine ourselves achieving our dreams and make collages to represent them: becoming a Sales Director, getting out of debt, traveling the world on Mary Kay's dime, buying my dream home with cash, the whole shebang. Really specific details. And I could not bring myself to sit down and do it. I didn't even want to try and picture myself doing those things. I didn't understand why I felt that way, but I did. I fell behind in the training and eventually gave up on it. It was a couple of months later before I finally realized why I couldn't face my dreams.
My Sales Director sent me an article, again talking about achieving success, and the author said she often asks people what their dreams are--what do they want to be? Let's say they want to be a writer. She then asks what they're doing to move towards their dream. Are they freelancing? Journaling? Studying? Their usual response is, "Nothing." Their dreams are just something that's often on their minds but in the back of them. Something that they'll do someday.
And that was me! Even the example fit perfectly. Even before I wanted to be a mom, I wanted to be a writer. I used to sit at my dresser with my parents' electric typewriter writing short stories for hours at a time. That was something I did for fun as a kid. And even though being a mom later moved to the top of my dream list, I still have always thought I would be a writer. Someday.
That's why I couldn't do the dream exercise with my training--my real, deep-down, true-blue, if-I-could-be-anything-what-would-it-be? dream had nothing to do with Mary Kay. As much as I loved enriching women's lives, making them look and feel beautiful, and being compared to Carmindy from TLC's What Not to Wear, I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do. And so I couldn't lie to myself and say that I wanted all this Mary Kay success when I knew deep down that it wasn't true.
I really wanted to write. And it was time to stop putting it off until someday.
And, ironically, I had Mary Kay to thank for giving me the confidence and perspective I needed to finally go for my real dreams.
So I made a change. I decided to stop striving for Directorship, move my business to part-time, and start doing something to achieve my dream of becoming a writer.
Now I'm writing my first novel and this blog. I have a lot of thoughts, feelings, and experiences about life that I'm just bursting to share. I love reading articles and blogs about parenthood and homemaking and have found them very helpful in my life, so I've decided to make that the theme of my blog. I would love to be that person for someone else. I have a voice, I have ideas worthy of sharing, and I'm excited to finally take the time to do so.
If you haven't put two and two together yet, just as Julie and Julia in part inspired me to go after my dreams, it also inspired the title for my blog. Julia Child's cookbook is called Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I like how that applies to mommyhood. Like any art, mommyhood takes discipline, study, creativity, a release of control to let your masterpiece be what it's meant to be, and the grace of our Heavenly Father to make it all come together harmoniously. Now, I'm not at all claiming to be a master of mommyhood; on the contrary, this blog will document my journey as I strive to master it while, hopefully, inspiring others as they do the same.
I plan on writing articles about all things mommy: cooking, cleaning, teaching, snuggling, spending time with your hubby, teaching your children the gospel, working from home, child birth, potty training--I want to cover it all. So I hope you enjoy my blog and find something in it to help you in your life. And I also hope that you will feel free to share any ideas or experiences you've had as well. Like Mary Kay said, if you have an idea and I have an idea, we each have one idea. But if we share our ideas with each other, then we'll each have two ideas. The best way to learn is by sharing with others, and then we'll both be that much closer to mastering our arts of mommyhood.
