How many times have you heard “Failure is not an option”?
Sorry, it is. Failure is an option. Only if you choose it to be.
Failure is not falling, but choosing not to get back up.
Sometimes you will fall flat on your face and not know how to salvage what’s left. That doesn’t mean you failed, you might just need help.
I have failed several times. Sometimes rather early on before anyone knew I even had a goal to fail at. I failed because I chose to stop trying. Over the years I have had a web design business with one non-paying client (but discovered coding was not that easy to learn in my free time and wasn’t my passion), I’ve had a photography business (because my parents had one and why not? But again, I didn’t enjoy editing photos, and in the end it wasn’t my passion), and then I had a small graphics company that I never even started advertising before deciding to not continue.
The key point with these failures wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t doing something right for business, but I didn’t have the passion to do it right. I didn’t pursue customer service the way I should have, because I didn’t quite care. These were business failures, but not life failures. Failure was an option, and I took it, in pursuit of finding what really sparked my passions.
It took several years after my last failure to discover, investigate and define my passion to the point where I knew I wanted to pursue a new adventure.
This time, I made the decision up front, that failure is NOT an option.
What sparks your passion?
When you think about your career, life, business – do you feel excited about what lies ahead? Do you need a slight push, but the passion is still there?
How do you define your passion?
Meraki: To do something with soul, creativity or love. To put something of yourself into your work.
If you could choose three things to do for the rest of your life, what would they be?
One for fun, one for money, one for self-care. What is your Meraki? What would be the one thing you can truly put a part of yourself into?
For me? I always want to be helpful. I used to just be a people pleaser, but a people pleaser doesn’t ever do what’s right for them, they allow themselves to be used and absorbed by others. What I needed to do, was find what allowed me to help others, but still help myself. I shifted my corporate career from project management to Quality Program Management. This allowed me to put my hand into projects and help mold them, educate the teams, implement tracking mechanisms, define progress and reach success. Turns out, I loved it! What I didn’t exactly love, was the limited aspect in which i was allowed to help, the limited influence my role had on the teams. I saw that there was so much more that I could do. So many more aspects of the project and team alignment that could be improved. How do I branch out and make the difference I could see was needed? Clear the lines of confinement and create my own business. This doesn’t mean your passion has to be entrepreneurial. Defining your Meraki is just that, yours to do. Do you want to be a project manager? Do you want to do exactly what you’re doing now, just improve how you do it? Do you want to be a division leader in your industry? Do you want to set aside time for your hobby and fulfill your fate through creative means?
Maybe you don’t have it defined yet. That’s ok!
Maybe you need to dig a little before you know what to pursue, and find something that triggers you to know that failure is no longer an option.
If you want help defining your Meraki, shoot me an email and let’s chat: andrea@themoiraeg.com