My Daughter Needs What?

Today was rough for this mom. I found a list that my 10 year old daughter had written. It went like this,
“Things I Need”
Pedicure
Designer Clothing
Chocolates (from adoring boyfriend)
Perfect Body
Exciting Diary
Princess Tiara
Manicure
Cute Flirty Habit of Twirling My Hair That Drives the Guys Wild
Shiny Hair
Perfect Skin
Beauty
Brains I was blown away. This list stopped me in my tracks. I immediately sat down on the porch steps and read this list over and over again. Each time I read through this it felt more painful that the last. The words practically assaulted me. I flipped through the rest of the pages of the notebook searching for some clue as to what this could mean. I hoped there would be more info that I could glean as to her state of mind or what might have caused her to write this but it was the first and only thing written in the entire notebook.

I was truly devastated. Could my only daughter actually feel this way? Think these things? At only 10 years old? I would have never imagined this. I’m a fairly strong chick and I’m pretty sure that has been passed on to my child as well. I thought she was Mini Strong Chick! She’s confident and outgoing. The girl doesn’t know a stranger. She’s bold and mature for 10. So, how could I have missed this? That she feels that she “needs” perfect skin and a perfect body at her age. What had I done wrong? As parents we have always focused on her intelligence, behavior, etc. over appearance and outward qualities. Or so I thought. Clearly we’d gone awry somewhere. So, like any good mom, I spent the next couple of hours beating myself up over this, mentally retracing all of my motherly shortcomings.

I tried to think of the best way to deal with this. My first thought was to head straight to her school and talk with her. I decided that it probably could wait until she got home in a couple of hours. So, I calmed myself down and went on with my day, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed my daughter. It’s a horrible feeling and I wanted to set this right for her. After the normal getting home routine - you know, let me see your work, how was school, what did you eat for lunch? - I brought out the notebook and told her that I’d found it in the car and asked if she could tell me why she felt that she needed the things on this list. She gave me a wrinkled eyebrow look and said, “That’s not my list. I found it in a book and thought it was funny so I copied it to show my friends.” (We’ll discuss plagiarizing later!) Oh dear God! I had panicked half of a day over this! To reassure myself, I asked her, “So you don’t feel this way? You don’t think you need the things on this list?” Her reply, “Well maybe a few things. Brains for sure. And probably a pedicure. My toenails are, well, yikes mom.” And on to something else she went. Like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t - to her anyway. She is Mini Strong Chick. Just like I thought!

The lesson in this? While I’m still absorbing the days event, two things stick out. One, a general thought that applies to everyone. Don’t spend your whole day worried about something that you have no control over. It will probably end up being a larger mental event that an actual event! And two, a thought for parents of girls. Parenting girls is absolutely terrifying. You not only worry about their physical well being but you spend a great deal of time worrying about their mental state as well. With all of the things that girls have to deal with these days it’s understandable. But I think that if we keep building them to be intelligent and strong people and not spend so much time caught up in their self image they’ll be stronger women than we ever were.

Change, Change, Change!

I am ready. Always ready. Ready for what? Change, of course! The story of my life is change...and I thrive on it. That's probably why I've been in the food business for so long and why I love marketing. It's always changing. Every year is a new challenge. Heck, every day, every minute even, in this business! I love it. It keeps my attention. And even when it feels crazy I feel alive. So, I ask myself, why do some people completely fall apart when faced with change and some people ramp up? Is it their upbringing? DNA? I don't know! But, as you may have guessed, I have some thoughts on this subject.

I, for one, would not want to live a life of no change. I think change can be good and exciting and bring new opportunites. But for some, change is a force to be dealt with. It's scary. Downright terrifying. They may have to adjust things in their lives to accept this new feared change. Or see something in a different way, and have to deal with that! They may not want change because they are already content with their life and how things are currently rolling along. There may have been a tragic event that changed their life in the past and now they will only associate change as being something bad. Maybe this describes you!

My daughter is always afraid of  "what might happen" and spends a great deal of effort distressing over it. (She's 10. We're working on it.) I always tell her not to worry about those things. If you don't know what will happen and you can't control it then it doesn't do any good to worry about something that might not even occur - get over it already. I can't tell you how many times I've said this to her, to friends, and sometimes, even though I'm embarrassed to admit it, to myself. I try to teach her to look at this hypothetical "what might happen terrible to me today" scenario and turn it around by asking herself instead, "what might be good about this".

I can't remember what conference I was at when I heard this but someone once said, "What is your biggest fear, your worst case scenario?" Write it down. And I did. A person near me was called upon and gave their answer, "Losing my job". And then the conversation went like this:

Speaker: What would happen if you lost your job?
Man: I might not be able to find another one.
Speaker: And then what?
Man: I may lose my house.
Speaker: And then what?
Man: I'd have to sell my house, sell my stuff, live in an apartment, or on the street.
Speaker: And then what?
Man: (After a second of thinking he very quietly uttered in a somewhat defeated voice) I don't know.

Well, after that the speaker went on to finish his presentation and I'm sure he did a fine job but I don't really recall. I was too busy thinking about the "And then what" to notice much else. That really stuck with me because I immediately realized a few things - 1.) We're all stuck on the "And then what"! We have to know what's next. We rarely enjoy the moment. We constantly concern ourselves with what happens next. 2.) We don't know! We don't know! Damn it, we just don't know!! and 3.) The speaker was trying to get us to strip away our fear of what we didn't know and didn't have control over and take us down to a level where we could look at ourselves and say, "So, what if my biggest fear did actually happen? What if I lost it all? Would I really lose? Or would I gain something else - something new and different? A new perspective? A changed life?"

Even though my baby girl is only ten years old she is already doing what most adults are doing right now - fearing the worst before it even gets there. Thank God, she has time to fix her mentality and so do you.

Business As Usual

When I say that there have been some recent changes in my life, it would be a massive understatement. In the last four months I moved from one house to another, moved my catering business fifty miles away, remodeled and opened a commercial kitchen, added on to my catering "empire" by opening a burger joint, taking on running the concessions for a local racetrack, started a fairly large garden project and CSA, and more than I care to list. Some days my head is spinning. Some days I wonder if I'm doing enough!

Before taking on the burger joint I had a moment of panic. I called a friend. "What if I fail?" I asked. "What if I lose it all?" You see, I've done that before. I've had it all. I've lost it all. I've been everywhere in the middle. My friend reassured me and I went on with my plans, closing the doubt out for the moment. This conversation with her really stuck with me. In it, she also shared some of her own doubts and I was grateful to have a companion in my struggle. This got me to thinking about the struggles that we each face in our businesses and in our personal lives and how unlikely that our friends even know that we're struggling. And then, a funny thing happened. I started to notice that a lot of my friends, who happen to be business owners as well, had that same smile that I had. You know the one, the "Oh dear God, I hope no one around me can tell I'm in absolute panic mode so I'll just smile through it" smile! At one recent event a few opened up to me about their struggles. The economy is tough. Business is tough. They're afraid, just like I was. They smile through it. They laugh through it. They'll get through it. Just like we all do. I was grateful to be a sounding board for them like my friend had been recently for me.