How to Use Your Setbacks as Guideposts
An Unfortunate Event
We’ve all had those heart-sinking moments when we can’t find something important and we briefly (or, perhaps, not-so-briefly) feel like life as we know it is over. I had one of those moments a few weeks ago. For a total of about 18 hours, I thought I’d lost all of the work I’d been doing getting ready to launch this blog, and I was devastated.
Past False Starts
I’ve been wanting to start a blog since at least 2016. I attended a Stampin’ Up! event that year a couple of my friends put on. One of the presenters at the event was an incredibly successful SU! demonstrator, and she contributed much of her success to a blog she’d started. Her motivational talk lit a fire under me. It was a slow-burning fire, considering I’m just now publishing my blog six years later, but it was a fire nonetheless.
First I thought I’d start a blog about either Stampin’ Up! and/or infertility, but I let that ship sail. After I got pregnant and delivered my boys at 23+6 gestation, I thought I should start a blog about premature birth. I even bought my domain name and started crafting a blog back in October of 2017, but I let my perfectionistic tendencies get in the way and never carried out my plan. I’ve still paid for that blog ever since then, though. That’s right. Over almost five years, I paid close to $1k for a blog that only I could see. Talk about embarrassing! 🤦 We live, and we learn, though, right?!
Getting Serious
Ever since Lincoln’s cancer diagnosis, the desire to finally start and stick with writing a blog had been growing inside of me. To stay sane when your child is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, you have to develop a gift of looking for the positives you can be grateful for. One positive I hoped for early on was that our experience could somehow help others who were forced to walk the same path later on. In order to help more people, I knew it was time to expand my audience, and I knew it was time to act on my goal of starting a blog.
Like Ryan Holiday details in his book by the same name, The Obstacle Is the Way! I could either use Link’s diagnosis as proof that we were destined to be picked on in this life, or I could use it to learn, grow, and help others. Don’t get me wrong. We still have plenty of moments when we feel put upon. However, we’re learning how to make those moments fewer and further between.
When this year started, Lincoln was nearing the end of his treatment. After going through so much in 2020 and 2021, I had an overwhelming desire to really make 2022 count. I wanted it to be an incredible, milestone year for us as a family and me personally. I was determined to tackle some big goals and celebrate our victories.
Just like I wrote about in my post about Big Magic, the universe/God heard my desires and opened up paths for me to turn my dreams into realities. Out of the blue, Facebook showed me a friend suggestion for someone I hadn’t seen since high school. I don’t know why, because we weren’t particularly close in high school, but I really felt like I should send her a friend request. I did just that, and it didn’t take long for me to notice and start following her inspirational posts and videos in her business group. Not long after that, she opened up registration for an updated 6-month life coaching program she’d be starting soon.
The Elevated Mother program would include weekly 1:1 coaching sessions, Zoom meetings, training videos, books, a private Facebook group for all the women going through the program, etc. It was geared toward moms who had big goals but wanted help reaching them because they often felt “stuck”. It sounded tailored to my needs, and after talking to my friend Robyn, praying a lot, and weighing the pros/cons, I decided to make the investment and sign up for the program.
Let me make something clear, though. This was WAY out of my comfort zone and wheelhouse! I grew up thinking that getting a life coach was a punchline. Crazy, rich people like Paris in Gilmore Girls got life coaches! I certainly didn’t need one.
Technically, I was right. I didn’t *need* to get a life coach. However, I knew that my good intentions of doing big things weren’t transitioning to actions. I knew that I had the potential to reach my goals and make a difference in the world, but I also knew that I am NOT a great self-motivator. I definitely get things done better when there’s an accountability factor. Finally, I knew that I was worth investing in.
I was very aware that even contemplating paying for a life coach was a very privileged position to be in. I was so grateful my family was in a place financially where I could make that decision. In the end, I took the plunge and paid to be part of the program, and BOY am I glad I did!!!
I decided back in April that I was officially going to launch my blog. I started crafting posts the next week, and I made my blog public on July 1st.
Crisis
It wasn’t a completely smooth process, though. Remember how I started this blog post? When I talked about having moments when we feel like our life appears to be over? Yeah. That moment happened for me at the beginning of June. Since I wasn’t launching my blog till July, I’d just been storing all of the blog posts I’d been working on on Evernote. One morning the app made me log in, and when I did, EVERYTHING was gone. Absolutely nothing was there—lists, brainstorms, in-progress blog posts, completed blog posts… Nada. After panicking, trying everything I could, and having my hubby try to recover things, I contacted Evernote support. By the grace of God, they were able to restore everything. 🙌 In the meantime, though, it became abundantly clear how important launching this blog was to me. I felt sheer horror at the thought of losing over a month’s worth of work. I dreaded the thought of having to either re-write all of my posts from scratch or just give up. I was SO FRUSTRATED with myself that I’d saved everything in this one app, and I was sure I would never be able to remember all of the ideas I’d written down. I was literally sick to my stomach at the thought that after all of my dreaming, planning, and hard work, people still might not ever see my writing. It was a wakeup call. Before this incident, I had a goal of launching my blog. Afterward, I realized that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. You’d better believe that I immediately started backing up—and double-backing-up—all of my files.
Looking for Signs
You’ll probably hear this a lot throughout the years, but I LOOOVE Oprah. One thing she said several times throughout her talk show (which I still desperately miss, BTW) was something along these lines:
“A lesson will keep repeating itself until it is learned. Life first will send the lesson to you in the size of a pebble; if you ignore the pebble, then life will send you a brick; if you ignore the brick, life will send you a brick wall; if you ignore the brick wall, life will send you a demolition truck.”
Life had been throwing pebbles, rocks, and bricks at me telling me to get my writing “out there” for years. I’m so glad I finally heeded the promptings.
What “pebbles” has life been launching at you? What themes keep showing up for you? What do you feel in your bones you should do? What thoughts have you had as you’ve encountered roadblocks? USE THOSE THOUGHTS! Pay attention to those signs. Take that first step. No one wants to come face-to-face with a demolition truck.